


The Twelve Kingdoms

by KingAlanI



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Hunger Games (2012), Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, F/F, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-20
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2017-12-05 21:45:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 44,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/728233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingAlanI/pseuds/KingAlanI
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By Alan Gilfoy in the worlds of Suzanne Collins and George R.R. Martin.</p><p>24 Westeros and Essos youth switch places with the 24 tributes to the 74th Hunger Games. Begins in the same timeframe as the 1st book of each series. Written in assorted limited 3rd-person POV’s.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Katniss I

            A minute elapsed and then a gong sounded. The 24 tributes raced towards a mountain of supplies they’d use to kill one another. This is how it had been for the past 73 summers, save for one year when the macabre procedure was carried out with twice as many youths. Details aside, these Games were a prime way The Capitol of Panem tortured the twelve districts under its thrall.

 

            Yet this year turned out to be even less normal than the Second Quarter Quell. Katniss Everdeen and the other 23 tributes were still there, and so were the piles of supplies before them, but their surroundings had shimmered and disappeared.

Their arena had been replaced with something alien instead of an arena she had found relatively familiar. The landscape was one of plain rolling hills instead of the wooded valleys at the edge of her territory back home.

The people around her were mostly strangers, one girl and one boy from each district. She knew the lad from her land – Peeta Mellark, a baker’s son, who saved her life with two loaves of bread one time when she was on the brink of starvation. She was fast getting to know the District Eleven girl – Rue Clayton was a darker version of Primrose Everdeen, Katniss’ very slightly built younger sister. Katniss loved ‘Prim’ so dearly that she had taken her place in this cruel contest.

 

            Katniss wondered if this was something the Gamemakers came up with. No, it couldn’t be. There was a road with men on horseback, and Gamemakers never put other people in the arena with the tributes. There was no point in fighting each other until this was figured out. The riders were just as confused. The youths before them were clearly not of Westeros or anywhere else in the Known World.

 

            Cato Adams, the tall and strong District Two boy, ran to the pile of supplies to pick up a sword. Marvel Hoffman, his District One counterpart, hefted a spear. Marvel may be a few coals short of a full mine cart, but he still understood that a long weapon would help fight men on horses, Katniss mused to herself. She wasn’t concerned about her own choice of weapon. Her father had taught her to be an expert archer amongst many other things, and a silver bow and quiver called to her. As she picked up the bow and slung the quiver over her back, she noticed that most of the others had also retrieved weapons.

 

One of the mounted men drew his sword and called out “Who goes there?” Apparently, whoever these people were, they spoke English as well as the silent language of bared steel.“I think none of us want to have to use these,” the horseman continued.

“I don’t know where we are, but I know who I am. Cato Adams,” the brash young man said, taking it upon himself to speak for the whole group. “Agreed,” he continued.

“Jory Cassel,” the rider said to identify himself. “Apparently you understand both the Common Tongue and discretion.”

He reached back across his body to put his sword back in his scabbard. Cato’s blade had no sheath, but he just as surely moved it to a nonthreatening position. Katniss took the nocked arrow back off the bowstring and put it back in the quiver; the others also rested their weapons. Jory and his comrades dismounted, to approach the group at a range that wouldn’t necessitate shouting.

“Lord Eddard Stark’s captain of the guards,” Jory elaborated. “These are the guardsmen I was patrolling with,” he said while gesturing to the men behind him. They all wore dark armor. Even the utilitarian tribute uniforms worn by Katniss and the rest seemed flashy by comparison.

“You seem like a knight,” said the girl from the third district.

“Not exactly. We northmen generally don’t take to orders of knighthood, but we compare quite well to those southron fighters nevertheless,” Jory answered. “We’re near my lord’s castle, Winterfell, the greatest fortress in the north, one of the seven united kingdoms on our continent of Westeros.”

Cato didn’t give her name, explaining “Most of us don’t know each other. We were thrown together by circumstance.”He didn’t seem like the sort of boy to understate. “Glimmer Shinesmith, my girl,” he said while pointing to the young woman in question. No wonder he was fascinated by her – the tall blonde was sexy even in these simple clothes, let alone the sheer gown she had worn to amuse the audience. Katniss wondered if the Capitol wanted fighters or models in its tributes. She had found a surprising friend in her stylist Cinna, but she was not the kind of girl who liked being poked and prodded. “Clove Hawkins, an old friend who wishes she was my girl,” Cato continued.

The short black-haired girl scowled and fidgeted with a knife while Jory and the rest of the guards laughed at Cato’s joke. “Handsome man like you? No wonder the wenches are all over ya!” one of the guards said boisterously.

“I’m Peeta Mellark,” said the pale-skinned blonde next to Katniss, by way of introducing himself. “That’s Katniss Everdeen – I’m not sure if she’s my girl or not,” he japed. Peeta had loved Katniss since they were young, but didn’t confess it until put in front of the Capitol audience. It was the last kind of thing Katniss thought about, so she took it for quite a shock.

 

“This castle of yours, is it far?” Katniss asked of one of the guards.

“Not at all,” that guardsman answered. “We don’t get many travelers here, so all of the household likely would want to see you,” he went on. The novelty would likely be even stronger for visitors as foreign as the tributes. Katniss hoped they wouldn’t just be a spectacle, though it was rather unlikely these people would treat them worse than the Capitol.

Jory agreed with his subordinate and then hazarded another guess. “Luwin is a wise old man at our castle. He should be especially interested in your arrival and might have ideas as to what brought you here.”

“I should be quite interested to learn from him,” said Nathan Wozniak, the boy from the third district, and his district partner seemed similarly intrigued.

The tributes gathered all the supplies they could from the pile, and walked behind the men on horses for the short trip back to Winterfell.

 

The new arrivals to this land were stunned by the sight of the massive stone walls. “We found four-and-twenty foreign travelers,” Jory called out to the comrade working the gate.

“We lost Robb,” he called back as he raised the iron grid that formed a barrier at the entrance. “Lord Stark’s eldest son and heir, nowhere to be seen!” he lamented.

They rode and walked through the now-open passageway, and a crowd gathered around. Even worrying about Robb Stark’s disappearance, the residents of Winterfell were still fascinated by the odd new arrivals. Eddard Stark himself was present amongst the crowd gathering in the castle courtyard. He was a somber man even without kin to worry about. Ironically, this rich family has the same gray eyes as The Seam, Katniss’ especially poor part of an especially poor district. “Perhaps my Robb safely ended up in the place these travelers came from,” the lord suggested.

“There are many mysteries here,” observed a bald man with a light gray beard and huge dark gray robes.

“Is he this Luwin man we’ve heard of?” Nathan guessed.

“Yes,” Eddard answered. “I suppose these travelers could use some food after their journey. Gage, fetch them bread and salt,” he said to a man evidently on his kitchen staff. Eddard was nothing if not an extremely honorable man, and he had invoked an ancient sacred custom beyond merely offering a meal. As the lord explained, “We call it guest right. When a host and his guests share food, it is just that they do not harm each other during the stay. Welcome to Winterfell.”


	2. Robb I

            A small crowd of youths looked around to see a forest of alien trees – not weirwoods or soldier pines or anything else they may be used to. The 24 young adults stood on a large round patch of bare ground, a hole in a sea of grass, with a circle of smaller holes around it. _Something is unnatural about this place, not merely foreign_ , thought Robb Stark, a son of Lord Eddard Stark and his wife Catelyn Tully.

 

Ironically, two faces familiar to each other were reunited in this strange land – Robb saw his half-brother Jon Snow, also Eddard’s son, but the identity of Jon’s mother was known only to her and Eddard.

 

Robb was Eddard’s firstborn son and heir – by right of birth he would have become one of the most powerful men in the Seven Kingdoms. Yet he wasn’t in the Seven Kingdoms any more. His brother Bran was now heir to Winterfell. Winter was coming, but fortunately their father was only 33.

 

Eddard was himself a second son. It was unlikely for the second son of a second son to inherit, but odder things had happened in the realm. King Aegon V had been the fourth son of a fourth son. He had been king only a few decades ago, followed by his son Jaehaerys II and grandson Aerys II. Insanity ran in the Targaryen family, and the second Aerys had been particularly afflicted. He had been deposed by the current king, the first Robert. Eddard, an old friend of the new king, was an invaluable ally in that war. He got married in the middle of the war and returned home victorious and to a son – Robb. _Luwin would be pleased that I remembered those lessons_ , Robb mused to himself.

 

It was impossible for a bastard to inherit. When Jon was growing up at Winterfell alongside Robb and the other children, he was constantly told that he could never have the castle himself. He had joined the Night’s Watch, a military order guarding the wall securing the country’s northern border. Westerosi men without a place often found one there, and Jon had taken that route. He had wished to follow the example of their Uncle Benjen. “Robb!” he called out. The two moved closer, and Jon added “I thought I’d see you again upon returning to Winterfell, but Robb, we aren’t in Winterfell anymore.”

 

“Who’s that with you, Jon?” Robb asked. Both were clad in the Watch’s thick black uniforms. _The air in this strange place felt like a moderate summer day_ , Robb observed, _but Jon and his friend must be sweltering under those wool cloaks._ Sure enough, the two began to loosen the layers of thick fabric.

“Samwell Tarly,” the very fat boy answered nervously. “So you’re one of Jon’s blood brothers – I’m one of his sworn brothers.”

“We have said the vows,” Jon explained. “However, we were sent away from our post and are nowhere near a wall to watch,” he said, echoing those words and their current situation. “Benjen is still lost beyond the Wall.” Their father’s brother was a man of the Watch, rising through the ranks as befit his skill instead of his birth status. Benjen was a legitimate child, but only a thirdborn son. Castoffs of noble families were elites amongst the black brothers. Not much of Westeros felt service on the Wall was honorable anymore. Much of the force’s dwindling strength consisted of criminals looking for redemption or to escape the usual punishments.

 

Grey Wind and Ghost also recognized each other. The Stark children had recently found a litter of six direwolf pups around the body of their recently deceased mother, adopting one each. The beast was the symbol of the Stark family, a cold weather creature even by the standards of the Westerosi north. Robb and Jon’s animals had traveled with them.

 

There was one other creature present – a horse with a silvery coat rode by a pale slight blonde girl. Three other girls walked alongside her. One was similarly pale, but with blue eyes instead of the mounted girl’s purple orbs. The other two had much darker skin and hair, one of them being bigger than the other. _They were all beautiful,_ Robb thought. He hadn’t thought about girls much while learning how to fill his father’s role.

 

One of the other young men present did not keep such thoughts to himself. “Seven hells,” he swore loudly. Not a Stark voice, delivering an epithet of the old gods, but a southron accent giving one related to the new. “That wench has a nice pair of teats!” he said while gesturing towards the thick dark companion.

 

Jon reached for his sword, a long blade with a carved gem-studded wolf’s head capping the hilt. “That was uncalled for, Prince Joffrey,” he announced loudly. Fear of the unfamiliar environment plus the thought of an unsheathed blade got the spoiled brat to shut up.

The young woman atop the horse spoke with a regal bearing. “It seems the Lannister boy has been sufficiently chastised. Thank you, Stark,” she said. Jon may look like a Stark, which is where she probably got the idea, but he was saddled with the Snow name common to Northern bastards. Jon did not correct her, since he had always dreamed of being called a Stark. “It appears your friend is of House Tully,” she said, speaking of Robb.

“That is my mother’s house, but while I look like them, I act like my father, a Stark, this is my brother,” Robb responded.

Daenerys turned to Jon again and said “I stand corrected”.

 

Then she looked at Samwell and japed “It appears your other friend is of House Tubby”.

“Tarly,” another young woman called out. “It’s Tarly.”

Samwell lightened up at the sound of the voice. “Talla!” he shouted.

“You always were my favorite brother, Sam,” she answered. “I never cared for what Father did to you, how he favored Dickon. He’s a skilled man, but not a very nice one at all, and I’m afraid our youngest brother will take after him.”

“You’ve always been my favorite sister,” Samwell agreed. “I have found a brother on the Wall though,” he continued cheerfully. “And it turns out you both made this journey with me.”

 

A large metal bird, probably some sort of war contraption, hit the ground near the group. One man stepped out in black-and-brown armor. “General Oliver Travers, I’m in charge here, who’s in charge of you guys?” he loudly announced. _The strange people in this strange place speak Common at least_ , Robb mused to himself.

Robb spoke up. “We don’t all know each other, ser, but this is my brother Jon, his friend Samwell, and his sister Talla.”

“I am Daenerys,” another confident young leader’s voice called out. “These are my handmaidens Jhiqui, Irri and Doreah.”

The other sixteen did not know each other.

“Get in,” the officer said in a clipped voice while gesturing to the metal vessel. He sensed the hesitation. “It’s a metal ship that sails the air instead of the sea,” he said while grasping for an analogy. “Boys, bring your dogs. Girl, bring your horse,” he added. “Welcome to the land of Panem. We’ll take you back to our Capitol for now.”


	3. Daenerys I

Daenerys Targaryen was no mere girl like the soldier’s dispassionate instruction indicated, but the word reminded her of her all too quickly vanished youth. She sat down in the metal bird and gazed outwards, amazed by the view. _This must be how my ancestors felt as they rode dragons_ , she thought. She’d received three dragon eggs as a wedding gift from Illyrio Mopatis. The corpulent businessman had arranged her union with Drogo. Her horse was a gift from Drogo himself, a suitable present with that horse-obsessed race.

 

Viserys intended for Drogo to put him in his rightful place as ruler of the Seven Kingdoms. There had not been a King Viserys in over a hundred years; he was the third after their seven-greats and five-greats grandfathers. He was the rightful heir to their father Aerys II, not the usurper Robert. Robert had killed their brother Rhaegar and then had Rhaegar’s children killed.

 

“Twenty-four of our people disappeared from where you appeared. It seems obvious that the two incidents are related, although we don’t yet have any idea how,” an officer explained. “They were to engage in a fight to the death as punishment for rebellion, a fate which does not apply to you, at least not yet.”

 

Her servants had fast become friends, and at least they had traveled with her. Doreah was a slight pale blond like her, but with Lyseni blue eyes rather than Targaryen purple. She was rescued from a brothel, or perhaps purchased for Illyrio and Viserys themselves, and had taught Daenerys all sorts of interesting things to do in the bedchamber. Irri and Jhiqui, both Dothraki themselves, had introduced Daenerys to the ways of the strange society. Irri focused on teaching Dany horseback riding, Jhiqui the Dothraki language. Viserys could have used their lessons more than Doreah’s body. He had trouble understanding the people he was counting on.

 

The marriage was the first time she had been away from the often temperamental Viserys. It was the result of someone else’s political machinations, but had quickly grown to genuinely love Drogo, and began to miss him while in this strange place. The word _khaleesi_ , queen to his king, rolled confidently off her lips even now. Daenerys patted her belly and spoke to Jhiqui. “I miss him already, especially since he’s responsible for this,” the queen said of her king and their prince.

 

One young woman had different thoughts. “Praise the Seven!” she shouted. “At least I am rid of him!”

“Rid of who?” Daenerys asked. “I was exiled from Westeros before being exiled here, so I have no idea, and I don’t recognize your House.”

“Erenford – and Frey. Married off to my liege lord, a disgusting old man old enough to be my great-grandfather. It was his ninetieth name day, me barely past my sixteenth. I still shiver when I think of him climbing all over me,” Joyeuse answered angrily. “Walder Frey has dozens of children, they say he is the only lord in the Seven Kingdoms that can field an army out of his breeches, but fortunately he has not left me with child.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I’m glad for my own luck though,” Daenerys answered simply. Drogo was Daenerys’ sun-and-stars, a Dothraki term for true love stemming from their belief that the sun god was married to the moon goddess. However, Joyeuse was a reminder that things could have been very different for Daenerys.

The head soldier responded by announcing “Here, we’d say the odds were in your favor”. He then continued with plans for the visitors. “This country is divided into twelve districts. Girl, your two dark servants remind me of the people in our eleventh district, so I’ll suggest that your group be sent there.” Then he turned from Daenerys to Joyeuse. “With all this talk of seven, why not send you to the seventh one?” he said to Lady Frey in a tone of voice that didn’t truly indicate a question.

 

The Dothraki avoided the ocean because horses wouldn’t drink the water. _That might be a problem in getting Drogo’s khalasar to cross the Narrow Sea_ , Daenerys realized. So the ship analogy hadn’t exactly worked with the Dothraki girls, but they went ahead and boarded the vessel. As Jhiqui said, “We shall follow the Khaleesi anywhere.”

 

Jhiqui was the one the Lannister boy had taunted. “Thank you for showing her common courtesy. Your sword said what my words were about to,” Daenerys said to Jon.

“You’re welcome,” he responded. “And you’re welcome to call me Jon Stark any time you want, although it’s really Jon Snow.”

“Might as well stick with ‘Stark’. Our leader is a ‘Snow’, and he’s not the kind of man you want to cross, even with something as simple as a name,” one of the soldiers explained.

 

When the interjection passed, Daenerys spoke alone to Robb. “I didn’t like being called ‘girl’, and I suppose you didn’t like those creatures being called ‘dogs’ either. I may be blood of the dragon, but I still know what a direwolf looks like.”

“Thank you. I must say you certainly seem like a queen,” Robb said.

“Too bad for you I already have a king,” Daenerys said, laughing off the compliment.

“A queen must have a king. It is known,” Irri chimed in, delivering the Dothraki saying in the Common Tongue for Robb’s sake.

“Yes, Irri, and this lordling will find his lady soon enough,” Daenerys added.

 

The craft landed and the youths from Westeros and Essos stepped out into another strange world. A massive crowd was interested in the strange foreigners, but more of Travers’ soldiers gave the craft and its occupants plenty of room. They were escorted to the leader’s palace, a short walk. They passed through a city beyond the wildest dreams of even the richest of the twenty-four.

 

A long white beard was a sign of a distinguished old man here as there. His house had a main room with a long table where the master sat at the head, not a foreign concept either. “I am Coriolanus Snow, President of Panem. Welcome to our Capitol,” he announced.

Joffrey spoke up. “Wow, I’m from the capital city of our land, and your city makes mine look like a commoners’ village by comparison.”

“My city indeed. I like you. You can stay here. However, I will spread out the rest of you,” Snow instructed. He approved General Travers’ plans for Joyeuse, and Daenerys’ group. The people with Robb were not broken up either, being sent to the twelfth. One of the commoner boys was a blacksmith, sent to a metalworking factory in District Two. That place was also known for its stonework, so a girl Mya joined him simply because her last name was Stone. _A bastard from the southeastern mountains_ , Daenerys recognized of the girl’s name. The other eleven smallfolk were spread out over the other eight districts.

“We’ll send you there on trains,” he finished. “A really fast carriage on a special road,” he hastily explained. Even the educated in the group were rendered quietly fascinated by this world’s advanced technology.

 

They separated now on their way to thirteen different destinations. Eleven was one of the furthest away, but it didn’t seem to matter much considering how far they had already come and how fast they’d get there – hours instead of over a month. Each group was greeted by the local lord. “I understand that you’re all about the same age. Who’s your friend, the light one?” Mayor Harvest Blade asked.

“Doreah,” Daenerys answered for her servant. “They say she is quite skilled in the art of appealing to men.”

“Already, at her age?” the mayor marveled. “By our law, fourteen year olds may only have sex with those their own age.” _Well, some things make sense here,_ Daenerys thought to herself. “I must warn you that I take all of this nation’s laws very seriously,” Mayor Blade said in a tone of voice that confirmed what he was saying.

A boy stepped forward. “Father, may I remind you that I am fourteen?” he announced with evident self-satisfaction. The boy then turned to Doreah and licked his lips.

“That is the son I named after myself, and what he says is true,” the mayor said stiffly.

“Well, hello, Harvest Blade, Second Of His Name,” Doreah purred. They quickly retreated to his quarters in the mayor’s house.

 

One of the local commoner families was also present; they had a child disappear rin this event. “We miss Rue, the first of our six, but this saves her from certain death. I hear that you are already with child, and yet you look like you are still a child yourself,” said Willow Clayton, the mother.

“I found out on my fourteenth nameday,” Daenerys answered.

The Clayton matriarch recognized that’s what birthdays were called in Westeros and Essos. “I was between my eighteenth and nineteenth when I carried my first, and I thought _that_ was early.”

“It wasn’t my idea. The marriage was arranged for political reasons, to a man slightly more than twice my age,” Daenerys explained.

Mrs. Clayton was aghast, indignantly countering with “This place may be a hellhole, yet we are still free to marry for love!”

Her husband Rock chimed in. “I am only two years older than my lovely bride.”

“I was lucky, as I quickly grew to truly love him,” Daenerys said with evident satisfaction.

“You’re going to be quickly growing, alright,” their firstborn son Johnny joked. If nothing else, he’d remember his mother carrying his younger siblings.

 

Daenerys talked with her servants and friends in private. “Well, we’d still be eligible for their Games next year, if we are still here next year.”

Jhiqui confidently announced “ _Khaleesi_ , I would gladly take your place if it comes to that, for both you and the _khalakka_ ”.

Irri cut in with “Well, Jhiqui beat me to it, so I shall extend the same honor to Doreah if the need arises.”


	4. Robb II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Robb Stark Week on tumblr (robbstarkweek.tumblr.com, tumblr.com/tagged/robb+stark+week) inspired me to hurry up and return to my Robb fics.

“Now that we’re in this strange new land, we must make peace with that and prepare to live out the rest of our lives here,” Robb announced.

“I suppose so,” Jon agreed. “However, we shan’t forget our past. The good parts of it at least. I’d be glad to forget that they don’t care about bastardy. I already very much like the sound of ‘Jon Stark’.”

“You’re as much a Stark as I am in both blood and deed,” Robb agreed.

“Well, now that I don’t have to worry about fathering a bastard, I’ll have to see what this ‘wenching’ thing is all about,” Jon continued.

“Jon,” Samwell said awkwardly. “We … we … said the words,” he added anxiously.

“That we did,” Jon admitted, referring to the part of Night’s Watch oath that forbade a wife or children. “It would be a concern if we were to go back to Westeros.”

“Well, Daenerys has a point, I’ll find a worthy lady soon enough,” Robb added. “Perhaps one of these pretty girls, perhaps not,” Robb said, gesturing to the other two passengers in the technologically marvelous wheelhouse called a train car. The girls were only slightly younger than the boys. Talla Tarly was Samwell’s sister, a thinner female version of her brother; considering Sam’s demeanor, that didn’t indicate as much of a difference as it did with most boys. Robb and Jon were familiar with that – their sister Arya took after them and their father moreso than their mother or Sansa, their other sister. Yet it was Sansa’s friend who was here with them. Jeyne Poole was the daughter of Vayon Poole, one of the key Stark servants back in Winterfell. Surely some boy would fall for Jeyne’s pretty dark hair and brown eyes, if not Robb.

They were very new to Panem, but had quickly learned that people here usually marry for love, even scions of the richest families. If the people in the big city were any indication, boys and girls not acting like typical ones was also relatively acceptable here.

 

In some ways, Robb thought it was a great loss to not live atop the crowd, in some ways a tantalizing opportunity. His father had always respected the smallfolk and lesser nobility, much more so than many lords in Westeros, and Robb had taken after that, but he could learn much and more from actually living amongst commoners.

 

The train had some machine that blew cold air over the passengers. _A marvelous taste of autumn in the middle of summer,_ Robb thought. Yet even considering the device, Jon and Sam had quickly felt a need to remove their heavy dark wool.

 

The servants in red had been completely silent throughout the journey. The soldiers, in white instead of the brown and black they first saw, had been quiet except for curt necessary communication. The train made some stops to drop off the other travelers, and eventually it came to the end of their line.

 

They drew a crowd here as well as in the big city. There were hundreds of people approaching them. Bones showed on many of them, especially those with olive-colored skin. Even the ones with skin as pale as Sam’s were nowhere near as large as him or even the other four travelers. “They look hungry,” Sam announced, his own belly rumbling.

Jon seemed to agree. “For once, now might be a good time to be craven,” Jon told Sam. “You weigh twenty stone, and some of the people here are literally starving to death,” Jon clarified. _It could well be the fate of people in Westeros if not enough food was put away for winter_ , Jon mused.

 

Jon led the five out into crowd. Sam wasn’t quite in the back – Robb was. There might be a panic over Grey Wind and Ghost, and it took Stark blood to control the beasts. Jon with his hand on a weapon also seemed to send a universal signal. The soldiers stayed on the train; there were some others at the destination, but their number and demeanor didn’t seem as threatening.

 

A tall pale men stepped forward, likely the local lord or someone else of importance. “From myself, Mayor Miles Undersee, and the other people of District Twelve, welcome, honored guests.”

He was standing with someone who appeared to be his daughter. “Margaret, but everyone calls me Madge,” the well dressed young woman spoke up politely. It might be a good idea for Talla and Jeyne to make her acquaintance, or for Robb to make her _acquaintance_. They may end up living something like commoners here, but they still hadn’t forgotten the dynamics of power. “I am sorry my wife cannot be here, she’s rather tired and sick. I wish she could have greeted you, or left her bed at all, really.” It was clear how sad he was when he talked of her.

 

Many of the crowd had head back to their homes, figuring they could see more of the strangers later, but a few dozen people remained. One of the tall darker men was clearly not an official. “Gale Hawthorne,” he announced, sticking his hand out and pointing the arm down. He had nearly a foot on even Robb and Jon, hardly short boys. They had grown, but Gale’s brothers and sister hadn’t. One of the brothers was holding hands with a pale and pretty girl. “Welcome to District Twelve. It sure ain’t much, but it’s home, and now it’s your home too.”

“Mayhaps it is,” Jon agreed.

“That they do,” Gale answered casually. “Katniss, she disappeared at the same time you appeared, I’m deep friends with her,” Gale continued.

“That’s her sister Primrose with my brother Rory over there,” Gale answered.

“They look so cute together!” Talla interrupted.

“May Katniss like Castle Winterfell. I usually did,” Robb said His bastard half-brother had found a new home at Castle Black, the main fortress of the Night’s Watch, but that Winterfell would always be a part of him.

“Now which one were you again?” Gale admitted.

“Jon _Stark_ , son of Eddard,” he introduced himself with relish.

“Son of Thomas, but he’s in the ground now. So is Katniss’ and Primrose’s father Jacob.” Gale added angrily. “Their mother Ingrid hadn’t gotten over it, and I can’t say I blame her. Neither has my mother Hazelle, but she had to be strong for her then-newborn daughter Posy.” Considering that, and looking at the little girl, the deaths must’ve been only a few years ago.

“Besides, cute baby made things a little less sad. Victor here, but everyone calls me Vick,” Gale’s other brother chimed in.

Jon knew he was about to say something inflammatory, so he leaned towards the new friend Gale to whisper. “Eddard Stark is first and foremost an honorable man, and raised his sons accordingly, and I fail to see the honor in letting one’s smallfolk starve or be slaughtered.”

“I like you,” Gale agreed. “You can stay here with me and help me cause all sorts of trouble.”


	5. Rue I

Rue Clayton liked Winterfell. These Starks were the first rich people to not treat her like human garbage. That was a weight off her back as much as the reprieve from the Games had been. The food in this strange new world was simple, but it was hearty and she didn’t have to steal it from people willing to whip or kill her. Something similar could be said of the hard but warm bedrooms.

 

Katniss, though, Rue loved Katniss. Rue was the oldest of six, but Katniss knew the importance of being the big sister better than anyone. She could very well have died saving little Primrose. However, she was one of the few people who might have been able to outfight the Careers. Those six still weren’t getting along with the outer district folks like her, but everyone was much more pleasant once removed from their kill-or-be-killed situation. Thresh had acted mean before but that was just to say he didn’t want to be a part of the Games.

 

When the son of the District Eleven mayor walked around his father’s domain, he said crude things to most of the poor girls, including her. However, Lord Stark’s son was real nice. “I’m Brandon,” he said. “But everyone calls me ‘Bran’. I like climbing the walls and my lady mother likes telling me not to.” He and Catelyn were two of the few people here with a normal name.

“Mamas worry about their babies, that’s the same anywhere,” Rue observed. She was twelve, two-and-ten as these people called it. He was seven, one year younger than her twin sisters Apple and Peach. “I’m good at climbing trees,” she added. _From working to pick fruit that was sent straight to the Capitol_ , she thought to herself because Bran obviously wouldn’t understand. “And so is my friend Katniss. Maybe we’d be good at climbing stone too.”

“Maybe we would be, Little Flower,” Katniss called from across the room. _She did have really good hearing, after all._

“I hope so, because I want to show you all the best towers,” Bran added.  


“Instead of these travelers from a foreign world, I was expecting guests I knew well,” Lord Stark explained over one of the dinners.

“Of course you’d know Robert well; you’ve spent half your life fighting his wars,” Rue heard Lady Stark mutter. _Husband and wife trading barbs, that ain’t different with rich pale folks either._

“I look forward to feasting both. Gods know we’d have plenty of food,” he explained. “Even when Robert is through with it,” he japed.

 

The people here even rode horses instead of eating them. A crown more than ten times as large as the group of tributes soon came riding through. They looked like they were even richer than the Starks, or at least displayed it more. Rue hated that attitude, since it cruelly reminded her how poor she was, and the money spent on that fancy stuff could much better have been spent on basic things for poor folks. However, Rue got the feeling that if Lord Stark liked these visitors too, they couldn’t be all bad.

 

This Robert was exceedingly fat, itself display of wealth in a way. When the native crowd bowed for the man, Rue and Thresh almost involuntarily tiptoed away from his white-armored guards. “I apologize, Your Grace,” Lord Stark began to explain. “We recently received guests from a foreign land. ‘Tis clear their local lords be cruel, and their soldiers also happen to wear white.” _He had figured it out perfectly._

“Foreigners indeed,” he said, looking at the group wearing clothes that were odd to him. “Prince Joffrey disappeared around the same time they appeared.”

“As did my Robb,” Eddard agreed. “But the details of it seem a matter for the maesters.”

“The ever honorable Ned Stark. Now for something more than just bread and salt?” Robert said cheerfully.

“Ah, the ever mirthful Robert Baratheon. Welcome again to Winterfell,” Ned finished.

 

Robert and Ned had some private business that brought a lull in the feasting for the rest. That was a good time for Rue and Katniss to actually go climbing with Bran. Regina and Nathan were some of the more educated people in their group, as appropriate for District Three. They were spending time with the wise man Luwin, beginning to exchange information about each others’ worlds.

 

It was fun tiptoeing up walls to walk on top of them, but then Bran wanted to climb something else. “There are a few buildings here at Winterfell that aren’t used any more,” Bran explained before climbing down as Rue and Katniss followed. Rue heard noises coming from the tower Bran had started to climb up. “Miss Katniss, that tower’s not empty,” Rue whispered to her climbing partner.

Bran was pushed away from the window. Katniss was able to catch Bran, but they both were winded and moaned with soreness as they heard the woman return to screaming of a different sort.

 

“There are two people in there wrestling with their clothes off,” Bran reported. Katniss was a stranger to romance, but still aware that more than athletics was going on in that chamber. “It’s a man and a woman that look similar with their blonde hair and green eyes. Probably Ser Jaime and Queen Cersei.”

“Even I don’t love my sister _that_ much!” Katniss japed.

 

            Obviously someone would want to know if their wife or husband was caught with someone else, especially famous people like queens or kings. Yet why get married if you’re going to do that? Rue’s parents and the other adults she knew sure didn’t have that problem. She supposed folks cling to love tighter when that’s all they have, and she had heard that rich people sometimes get married for other reasons anyway.

“Do you know if Jaime has a wife?” Rue asked Bran.

“He does not. The kingsguard cannot have wives,” Bran explained.

“Like our ‘Peacekeepers’,” Rue agreed, choking out the oh-so-inaccurate word.

So this was an issue between Jaime, Cersei and Robert. “Best announce it publicly. They tried to kill me to keep their secret; they wouldn’t be able to silence everybody in the room.” The three agreed, waiting for a good time at one of the public gatherings.

 

            “We’re not killing each other,” Cato said of his fellow tributes. “So I’m itching to fight. Anybody care to duel?”

            One young man stepped forward. Nearly as tall as Cato, they were both short compared to many of the other people here. “Theon Greyjoy. Let’s see if any of you fancy foreigners are actually any good with steel in your hands.”

            One of the older Winterfell men stepped forward, apparently recognizing this issue as his concern. “Rodrik Cassel, my nephew Jory is the guardcaptain who found the foreigners, I’m master of arms here. I strongly suggest that such a duel be fought with practice swords, so the only injury is to the loser’s pride.”

            “So be it,” Lord Stark said, agreeing with his servant.

 

            The other tributes were all glad to be amongst the crowd watching the fight. Not being to the death, and their deaths in particular, it wasn’t so bothersome. It was an unfamiliar sword, but Cato Adams still very much knew what to do with it, attacking Theon with several vicious strokes, quickly bringing him to yield. “You fought well,” Cato offered.

 

“There’s something more important I want to say...Bring Glimmer out here.” She arose from the crowd and walked out to him on the field. He knelt down and said “Marry me.” The woman was ecstatic at the words.

            The king rose to speak. “In our land, to kneel in front of someone is a declaration of loyalty to them. I’d say that bodes well for your union.”

            Pearl, one of the outsider girls, added “In our land, we say ‘may the odds be ever in your favor’.”

            The queen, once Pearl’s interruption passed, spat back with “And what would you know about such fealty? Bastards. Bastards everywhere.” Apparently, King Robert’s whoring was hardly news to the natives, but they pretended to be shocked when Queen Cersei complained about it publicly.

Katniss recognized a good cue when she saw it. “What would you know about it either?!” she shouted. “You bed your brother!” Cersei’s reaction seemed to betray her guilt.

            “Well, it must be Jaime…women do not bed Tyrion unless he pays them,” japed one of the King’s attendants. “Kingslayer and kinlayer,” he continued.

 

Behind the japes there was a deadly seriousness. Rue worried somewhat. Growing up in District Eleven, she had certainly learned what happened to such severe criminals. Now she wasn’t the supposedly guilty one, the clearest proof that they definitely weren’t in Panem anymore.


	6. Katniss II

Katniss had found a welcome in this strange land, as had most of the other Panem exiles. Well, most anything seemed welcome compared to embracing one’s imminent deaths with the knowledge there was nothing anyone could do to help.

 

Katniss would never understand some things about the Careers, even though the tributes were getting along relatively well in these circumstances. Clove and Marvel were the only two who seemed at all frustrated. Perhaps they didn’t want to be denied the sick glory of the Games. Glimmer and Cato were more interested in each other, and the District Four tributes generally didn’t seem as bloodthirsty as their comrades from One and Two.

Pearl, that girl from Four, had another explanation of Ms. Hawkins’ and Mr. Hoffman’s behavior. “Even back in their district, Clove had always wanted Cato, only to be rebuffed at every turn. Maybe she even volunteered early for revenge. I think something similar is going on in Marvel’s thick skull.” It was a long story, a string of long stories, but Katniss always feared the depths that love will drive someone to. So she didn’t understand such things, but even she could figure out that seeing Glimmer and Cato together made things worse for them.

 

She were interrupted by the approach of their hosts. Eddard Stark was a calm person; even his son’s near death didn’t send him into a rage, seething though he may be on the inside. Catelyn Tully was a different story. “The Mother is merciful!” she screamed to the foreign girls who were responsible for it not being an actual death. “But I want Ser Jaime’s head!”

“I will pass the sentence if His Grace will let me swing the sword,” Eddard said solemnly, but then again, he said everything solemnly.

 

King Robert was similarly unamused, if only for his friend’s sake. Katniss and Rue were present at the sentencing along with the witness they’d saved. “I would like to thank the young Brandon Stark for his honest testimony, and Lady Everdeen and Lady Clayton for enabling him to deliver it.” One of his many servants presented all three of them with piles of gold. It was a nice gift for the Stark lordling, unimaginable wealth to the two girls who had grown up amongst Panem’s poorest.

 

“We ate of Lord Stark’s bread and salt…” Robert began.

“Some of us ate much more than that,” Jaime interrupted, which Robert ignored.

“You attempted to murder his son, a grave crime even if it did not occur in violation of guest right.”

“I generally don’t push children out of windows for their health,” Jaime said.

The boisterous Baratheon seemed to enjoy ranting about Jaime’s offenses. “It is treason for someone besides the king to bed the queen, for confusing the line of succession. It is oathbreaking for Kingsguard to father children at all. Do you deny any of it?”  
            Jaime focused on what little remained of his dignity, calmly saying “No”.

“I shall grant you the usual reprieve – if you wish to live, you join the Night’s Watch. Cersei – the Silent Sisters shall become you.” He was sent to a rather different military unit, she would join a holy order of women that processes the bodies of the dead.

“Consider yourselves lucky it’s not my son they’re coming for,” Catelyn muttered.

“A new union is being built at the same time my marriage reaches its final disintegration. I hope your two fellow foreigners have better luck than I did,” Robert finished.

 

The royal party left, except for Tyrion staying to travel with his brother Jaime one last time. The two were close, despite seemingly being as different as brothers could be. Jaime was tall and handsome, Tyrion exceedingly short and at best plain. “I adore my younger sister, I’m even here because I risked my life to save hers, yet we can be as different as night and day. In short, she mostly looks like and acts like our mother, and me our father,” Katniss told Tyrion.

“Lord Stark’s daughters also seem like that,” Tyrion said. “Have you met Arya?”

“I have. She’s quite impressed that a girl can be so good with bow and arrow. She’s not so bad herself,” Katniss answered.

 

Admittedly, Tyrion would rather talk to Cato, and Katniss overheard them as she waited for Arya to find her and head back to the archery targets. “I fancy myself a connoisseur of fine wenches, and I must say, you got yourself a real good one,” Tyrion started.

“When you look like me, you don’t have to pay them,” Cato shot back.

“’Tis true enough. At least I’m a rich dwarf,” Tyrion admitted.

“But yes, she’s something else. Not only is she the prettiest I’ve had in a long time, she’s the only one I’ve ever wanted for more than a night,” Cato added.

“I had a girl like that, but my father couldn’t abide a son of the noble House Lannister marrying a mere commoner,” Tyrion said, with both sadness and anger palpable. Katniss knew the feeling. _What she would like to say to her mother’s mother…_

“My mother would just be glad I’m settling down,” Cato said cheerfully, more angrily uttering “And my father’s dead.”

            “And my mother’s dead,” Tyrion countered, imitating Cato’s tone. “Which is worse, to not know them or know them all too well?” Tyrion mused.

 

            From Arya, Katniss gathered that Sansa thought differently, although not in the same ways Katniss differed from Prim. “Oh he’s so brave and handsome!” Arya said, parroting Sansa’s thoughts on Glimmer’s betrothal to Cato.

            “Reckless, more like it,” Katniss said, and the two girls laughed.

Apparently Sansa had long since talked too much about her far-future wedding and that had only gotten worse thanks to this near-future wedding.

 

Katniss had never thought about such things, having been concerned with more-important matters. Prim simply wasn’t old enough. However, Katniss could see herself growing quite fond of the sweet boy who had traveled with her. Years of being afraid to confess his feelings was in the past now that he had. Anything she could have had with Gale was obviously gone now. All of the tributes were growing closer together as an island of familiarity in this strange world.

 

Prim was actually slightly older than Sansa, although the children here seemed to act older than their ages indicated. Katniss wondered what else crossed Sansa’s mind; the young lady hardly seemed stupid. Maybe wealth made it easy to retreat to such petty concerns, which she also saw in Capitolites. That was sad; it was a horror how the minds of the poor were wasted - left starving, hysterical, naked.

            Weddings here also entailed going to a special building to say words before an official. “The Faith Of The Seven,” Lady Stark began to explain while showing the group to that part of the castle. Looking at the little building, Katniss saw that there was seven of everything – walls, statues inside, arrows on the symbol, and so on. “The New Gods, not so new any more.”

            “Faith? Gods?” Even the smartest person in the group, Nathan of District Three, was confused, let alone the rest of the tributes.

            It was obvious to Lady Stark, but she nevertheless politely explained “Rules for living this life, associated with beings beyond it.”

 

Katniss was amazed that such an important aspect of life was not entirely controlled by the government, however involved it may be. Government would worry about something not under its control, and something besides its own propaganda commanding the people’s attention. However, the rules of these faiths and gods could be what the government wanted. _Oh, what Gale the rebel would make of this!_

 

At any rate, Lord Stark had other ideas. He valued a sacred forest – the thought of trees caught Katniss’ attention and she hoped her fellow tributes would take this route. “Those are the old ways,” Catelyn said, some exasperation coming through her politeness. Well, those old ways sounded simpler – just saying some words while bowed to the heart of the grove. That simplicity seemed to allow less control of the kind she was worried about when doing things the other way.

 

Catelyn’s wedding gift was the wedding dress itself and other finery for Glimmer. Women’s formalwear was relatively similar here, and Katniss detested the gowns just as much. One of Catelyn’s servants presented an imposing creation of wavy red and blue fabric. “A _stark_ difference from a plain white dress,” Glimmer japed.

“Actually, they’re the colors of my birth family, Tully, though rather prettier than grey and white, I’d agree,” Catelyn answered good-naturedly.

“Will you wear your own wedding gown again as the host?” Glimmer asked.

“I can’t; it’s torn. Credit Jory Cassel for that.” Then she hesitated. “We have a custom called the bedding where the men at the wedding strip the bride and carry her to bed while the women do the same with the groom. I admit it’s nerve-wracking enough even if you’re used to it; we’d certainly understand if you foreigners want no part of it.”

“I like the idea of showing off what I got,” Cato answered.

“As do I,” his bride-to-be agreed.

 

The men’s heavy robes and cloaks were different from the light crisp shirts the tributes were used to. Yet nothing could beat the fabric of the tribute uniforms for normal occasions. Mackenzie and Samuel from the textile factories in District Eight took a certain pride in this. “Did you make these?” Catelyn wondered of Mackenzie.

“Don’t rightly know, m’lady, I prepared plain fabric,” she explained.

“Needlework is a common practice for highborn women such as myself, mayhaps I would have been a seamstress if born a commoner,” Catelyn answered, politely although furtively searching for common ground.

 

            “Their bows are something else too,” Arya added, having learned that at the targets with Katniss.

            “The shooter is something else,” Peeta chimed in. “Katniss is as beautiful at archery as she is in general,” smiling with an air of self-satisfaction. Her archery abilities were well-known, although she was pleased at how well Peeta had taken notice. The second part of the comment was unfamiliar, but she liked that more than she thought she would.

            Rodrik Cassel was impatient to get to his matter of expertise. “Mr. Mellark here is ever the gentleman, and Lady Everdeen is incredibly accurate. However, when she tries to shoot some of our bows, the power and range isn’t as significant.”

 

            “That sword of yours was heavy, sir,” Cato announced as soon as Rodrik finished his report on bows.

            “It was a regular sword, simply not given an edge,” Rodrik answered.

            “Pick this up and see what I mean,” Cato explained.

            Rodrik held the arena sword and was amazed at the light weight for the kind of edge it held. “As good as Valyrian steel, which is a rare heirloom here. Whole wars fought with weapons like this?”

            “We’re actually given old weapons for …” Cato hesitated. “…our melee tournaments, as it were. I can’t even begin to explain what our soldiers use.” That was one of many surprises for Panem and Westeros folk alike.

 

Glimmer and Cato had chosen the woods, and it was time to lead them there. They were escorted primarily by their fellow Panem exiles. “It is an odd wedding procession, so many too young to be married themselves,” Catelyn announced. However, it took a Stark in Lord Eddard himself to show them the way through the forest’s so-called paths.

Katniss was one of many tributes marching with their weapons, and she couldn’t resist shooting at a deer that appeared in the edge of her vision. “Take it to Gage and have him add it to the wedding feast,” the lord decreed. Some servants came along to haul it to the kitchens. _This kind of hunting I can definitely get used to_ , Katniss thought.

 

“Who comes? Who comes before the old gods of the forest?” ‘Ned’ recited.

“I, Glimmer Shinesmith, a woman grown…” Here, adulthood was at sixteen instead of eighteen, so she qualified at seventeen. “…trueborn…” Her parents _were_ married, though that was of less concern back home. “I come to beg the blessings of these gods of yours. Who comes with me?”

The groom’s part of the formula was simpler. “Me. Cato Adams.”

“Lady Shinesmith, do you take this man?” the lord continued in his capacity as chief witness.

“I take this man,” she shouted. The couple knelt together and recited what they were told to whisper; even Katniss didn’t pick up the words.

They rose, and when Cato went to kiss his beloved, Peeta did the same. It turns out that Katniss rather liked the feeling of a boy’s lips on hers and pulled Peeta close, running her hands through his hair. “Seems you’re making up for lost time!” Katniss happily observed as the group walked away from the woods to the feast hall.

He’d seemed indecisive, but corrected her. “Oh, I was very decisive. I just found myself unable to act on that decision for some reason or another. I made up my mind with you years ago. Maybe not at five – since we were so young, I didn’t think as much of it as I do now. But definitely when I threw you the bread when we were one-and-ten.”

 

The unfamiliar form of ‘eleven’ rolled easily off his tongue. _Words seemed to come easy to him_ , Katniss thought. _Which made his previous silence with me seem all the more odd._

 

Katniss had venison before the few times she had gotten so lucky in the woods back home. Cato had always been quite well-fed, but on other things. “It’s very strong, that’s for sure. Almost overpowering by itself, but quite pleasant in the stew,” he said. _Fair enough._

 

            Tyrion and Logroll, the ‘woman grown’ from District Seven, were both full of wine with their hands roaming all over each other. “You’re so clever and funny!” she observed. _Well, it’s only fair that he have_ something _attractive about him._

            “That royal jester was wrong. Here’s at least one woman who will bed the ol’ Imp without being paid,” he japed. “I am the god of tits and wine!” he added, one hand on each.

 

            “Bed the newlyweds first!” someone shouted.

            “Fine by me!” Marvel added, no stranger to fermented grape juice today either. “Let’s see what Cato’s getting!” Somehow the dress was removed from Glimmer in one piece. Katniss could not blame Peeta for paying very close attention – however beautiful he insisted she was, Katniss saw how pretty Glimmer was. Looking at Cato, she thought _That’s supposed to go where?!_ and her own legs experienced shaking of a different kind.

 

When the newlyweds were carefully carried into their bedroom, most of the wedding party stayed right by the chamber as Logroll and Tyrion went looking for one themselves. The crowd continued shouting rude japes Katniss couldn’t even begin to understand.

 

“I know how to fuck,” an annoyed Cato shouted back through the door.

            “He sure _ooh yes_ does!” his bride confirmed. “It’s like our bodies are made for each other!” she shouted semi-coherently.

 

            The next morning, Ned suggested another adventure. “The king came here to offer me a post as his chief advisor in our capital. Do our foreign guests care to see that city and the parts of the country on the way?” All four-and-twenty seemed interested. “Well, Hodor will show you to the stables.”

            “Hodor,” the large man replied.

           

            “It’ll still take some getting used to horses as transportation,” Regina Gates, the District Three girl, admitted. “Where we’re from, people get around other ways, although there’s still a certain appeal to the horse. Many a girl wanted a pony.”

            “Yeah, so I could have butchered it,” Katniss japed. “I rather like no more starving now.”


	7. Eddard I

Eddard Stark’s tenure as Hand began with a crisis, the revelation of Jaime and Cersei’s adulterous incest.

 

Ned led his daughters, seven-and-ten of his staff and guards and all of the foreign visitors towards King’s Landing. More of his servants and soldiers may yet follow, but the rest of his family was to remain at home – there must always be a Stark in Winterfell, though now it was Bran instead of Robb. Jory Cassel was leading some guards south, but Rodrik Cassel was leading some other soldiers further north, taking Jaime Lannister to the Wall five-and-ten years too late.

 

Vayon Poole would manage the household in King’s Landing as in Winterfell. His departure was one of many issues those remaining in Winterfell needed to be mindful of, and his daughter Jeyne was part of a departure of a different sort.

 

Right now, he was haggling with an innkeeper. “Party of Lord Eddard Stark, recently appointed Hand of the King,” Vayon said.

“Ah, His Grace means money,” the innkeeper said gleefully. “I sold him a room for an hour once.”

“I care not of bastard gossip. I do care about stable space, two-and-forty single rooms, and one married couple.”

“Seems they married for love and very recently,” the innkeeper gleefully guessed.

“You have the right of that,” Vayon agreed, as Cato used the arm hooked around Glimmer’s waist to lift her up and make them the first two to head up the stairs.

 

King Robert had left a few days earlier, but Ned’s group rode faster than the king’s ponderous party, even with the foreign visitors just learning to ride.

 

King and adviser, friend and friend, began some discussions that had to take place in person. It was hard if not impossible to send messenger ravens to or from people traveling. Robert was illiterate, and Ned was one of the few men he trusted enough to handle such important messages on his behalf. Jon Arryn had been one of the few others.

 

This was incredibly odd to the foreign visitors; even the poorest of them were taught to read and write. Only the especially stupid were illiterates there, and Ned knew several reasonably intelligent illiterates, Robert included.

From what Ned had gathered of their local lords, the rulers would have the smallfolk read lots of government propaganda.

Still, common literacy would reduce dependence on educated men, particularly for common tasks. People could read instructions on their work, or advice on the marketplace. Ned, as a soldier, would find it particularly useful for orders and outriders.

 

“Tyrion has taken it upon himself to advocate for his relatives. He’s the reason I didn’t have you send your sword through the Kinlayer’s neck. But as for his ‘sweet sister’, he said ‘fuck her because she wouldn’t fuck me too’,” Robert said.

“Those Lannisters do have their wits about them even in dire situations,” Ned admitted.

“Hell, she barely fucked me either. The way she guarded her cunt, it was as if she had half the gold of Casterly Rock between her legs.” Ned was numb to Robert’s rude japing by now.

 

The sudden delegitimization of Cersei’s children was the major consequence, since the law of the Seven Kingdoms took that so seriously. “I thought Tommen was my heir in Joffrey’s absence, but neither are my sons and Myrcella is not my daughter. I finally realized the obvious, that my supposed children look nothing like me,” Robert admitted. “I shall legitimize the younger ones. That was another issue on which Tyrion’s counsel seemed to prevail with me.”

“I do not have any contrary advice, Your Grace,” Ned said. “It seems like it would help keep peace with House Lannister, especially once Tyrion succeeds his father to Casterly Rock.”

“Tyrion also quoted Jaehaerys II, the esteemed predecessor to my not-so-esteemed predecessor.” _Madness and greatness were two sides of the same coin and every time a new Targaryen was born, the gods would toss the coin in the air and the world would hold its breath to see how it would land._ “The Imp also said that Tommen and Myrcella were good decent children, that Jaime and Cersei beat the odds,” Robert continued.

“I suppose Jaehaerys’ words apply to Lannister siblings as well as Targaryen ones,” Ned agreed.

 

“Weren’t Lord Tywin and Lady Joanna cousins?” Ned wondered.

“They were,” Robert recalled. “And they were happy together, as you and Lady Catelyn still are. Tell me, what’s it like to have your lady wife love you more than her brother?” he added bitterly.

“We’ve built a loving relationship, aye,” Ned sort of answered.

“I suppose it helps when you have one bastard instead of too many to count,” Robert admitted.

 

Ned actually didn’t have any bastards at all, but he mouthed a simple agreement. Robert was the last person Ned would admit the truth of the matter to. Robert was the reason for that lie in the first place. His bastard son Jon was actually his trueborn nephew, of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark.

 

Lyanna died in childbed bringing Jon forth. Her last words, whispered feverishly while lying in a bed of a blood, were “Promise me, Ned”. To protect the babe. Ned Stark was nothing if not a man of his word, and it was a cruel irony that the only way to live up that was to impugn his honor with his wife.

 

Murder of babes though it was, Robert felt the need to have other claimants to his throne killed. Rhaegar’s other two children had been butchered by the Lannisters in the immediate aftermath of the war. If Jon was thought to be Ned’s son instead, he could be hidden in plain sight.

 

Selecting Jaime’s replacement in the current Kingsguard was a matter of prime importance. At least there was one vacancy to fill instead of five as after Robert’s Rebellion. Jaime had remained in King’s Landing with Aerys II during the war. Ned and six of his companions fought through three of the Kingsguard to get to Lyanna, unfortunately not in time. Only Ned and Howland Reed survived that battle. Ned was confident that Lord Reed was the only other person to know or suspect the truth of Jon’s parentage. Cersei’s children looked like Lannisters instead of Baratheons. However, Jon had the Stark look, which helped keep Ned’s secret. People found it somewhat believable that even Ned slipped on his honor just once, some japing about how tempting the wench must have been, but it was actually one of the most difficult things he’d done to maintain his honor.

 

Robert had loved Lyanna too, only to see her run off with Rhaegar. Out of jealousy, Robert slandered Rhaegar as a kidnapper and raper. Rhaegar had been nothing of the sort, and Ned’s own honor hated to see another man’s virtue unfairly questioned. The crown prince they’d defeated had been a great man despite his father’s madness.

 

The Night’s Watch had sent a raven about Jon’s disappearance, as well as that of his fellow steward Samwell Tarly. Well, Jon was definitely safe in the foreign land where he resided now. The foreign visitors said that bastardy was no great concern where they came from, and their cruel ruler was a Snow. Jon would be glad to call himself a Stark; he practically was one anyway.

 

Rhaegar’s siblings had escaped to Essos and managed to avoid royal agents all this time. Ned realized that Prince Viserys and Princess Daenerys, now twenty-two and fourteen, could become a threat to the realm.

 

Thinking of Daenerys’ age reminded Ned that all of the Westerosi who had disappeared were between twelve and eighteen, the same ages as the foreign visitors. One of them had just celebrated her sixteenth nameday – Marissa, the young woman with a 5 on her shirt. That was always a milestone, but much more so when it came along with a reprieve from death.

 

The heir to the throne was now Robert’s brother Stannis instead of one of Robert’s supposed sons. “That’s the kind of thing a man should hear in person,” Ned pointed out. “After all, you went to great lengths to offer me the Handship to my face.”

“So we head for Dragonstone after King’s Landing,” King Robert said glumly, obviously worn down by the travel, less obviously worn down by heavy news.

“And the heir to Stannis’ throne would be your youngest brother Renly, not Stannis’ daughter Shireen,” Ned pointed out. “Most inheritances would go to a daughter before a brother, but the laws for the Iron Throne are _especially_ strict on sticking to the male line.”

“I somehow doubt Renly will have heirs,” Robert said, laughing to himself.

“That it would go to Shireen, I believe, so she ought be prepared for the responsibility as well,” Ned suggested.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made several small additions throughout Chapters 5 and 6, especially Katniss reflecting on Peeta after he steals a kiss.


	8. Miles I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made several edits to previous chapters:  
> Chapter 2 – revised Talla Tarly conversation  
> Chapter 3 – reorganized Daenerys-Joyeuse conversation, expanded introduction of D11 mayor  
> Chapter 7 - expanded the introduction to the Robert-Ned conversation, added a Kingsguard mention to the discussion of Rhaegar+Lyanna=Jon.

            For Miles Undersee, this year’s Games had certainly been the most interesting event since he was inaugurated as Mayor of District Twelve on January 1st of the 71st year since the Dark Days. For each of the first three Games during his tenure, two tributes had been reaped with none to return, as was all too usual in even the better-off districts, let alone his. This year, one volunteered, another was reaped, and an entirely different five returned.

 

He knew all too well what happened to the loved ones of those who didn’t come back. His wife Melody was still devastated from the loss of her twin sister Maysilee Donner nearly a quarter-century ago.

He and their daughter were bright spots in her life, but they weren’t medics. Fancy Capitol doctors couldn’t or wouldn’t help her get better. Even if an individual physician cared, the Capitol wouldn’t have given them the training or equipment for maladies of the districts. It was part of the Capitol using the suffering of the Games was useful as a warning against another rebellion.

Some of his fellow mayors even thought this was all for the best to prevent further deaths. _Patrick Lazare, Net, Miranda McGraw, Harvest Blade, try saying that if it’s your own children._

The odds did not favor local healer Ingrid Everdeen, once Kolster, either. She definitely cared, having been one of Maysilee’s friends. Yet she could not cure his wife either.

 

Supposedly mayors served the Capitol from their districts. Sometimes he couldn’t believe he even pretended to serve that city. He served his district by protecting them from the Capitol as much as he could. His fellow local authority, Head Peacekeeper Walter Cray, simply didn’t care, although in a way his apathy protected the people he was charged with controlling. Cray would rather drink and fuck. The alcohol was illegal. Many of his bedwarmers were underage. Well, there were many extreme things that people in this district had to do for money. His corruption allowed more-important lawbreaking to take place, and any replacement would allow neither. Cray made a show of things on Reaping Day and when the Victory Tour stopped by; his successor would be like that all year.

 

Right now, Mayor Undersee was wondering what to do with his district’s newest residents. What jobs would they have? Where would they live? A house had just opened up in town. He was relieved to be able to place them in the Merchant Section, since it meant he was able to save some people from the Seam.

 

The Capitol made him waste the mansions in Victors Village, which could hold dozens in luxury. They were only for victors and their families, an offer of the Games to go with the threats. Only one in District Twelve was occupied, and barely so. Haymitch lived there alone. His family and girlfriend had died soon after he won. Maybe that had been a Capitol setup as punishment for the unorthodox victory. No wonder Abernathy drank even more than Cray.

 

Rich women of Westeros generally knew how to sew, Jeyne and Talla included. Here the work would be more practical than decorative, but they understood. Hazelle Hawthorne was a Seam woman who did laundry for most Town families; she probably came across plenty of pieces in need of repairs.

 

Sam had realized that his excess weight would be rather unpopular with the starving people this district had thousands too many of. Sam knew that he ought to do something about it. Mayor Undersee saw a teacher in the Tarly boy, a smart lad who was calm and patient. Reading, writing and math would be similar since they spoke the same language and wrote it in the same script. They called such people a word that sounded something like ‘masters’, and Sam seemed like the sort who respected that. He’d start by working with Town kids who would be somewhat less offended by the physical signs of his past excess.

 

As for the other two boys, their new friend Gale Hawthorne likely had entirely different work in mind for them. Robb and Jon could use weapons on a hunting ground instead of a battlefield. The way Jon handled that sword reminded Mayor Undersee of one thing – Career tributes. Robb knew such things too; it was a matter of course for their upperclass young men to learn that trade. Those beasts of theirs looked born to hunt; various District Twelve natives had learned the hard way that they were not just big dogs. They could only be controlled by their masters, but that bond was incredibly deep. At any rate, Mayor Undersee resolved to continue looking the other way.

 

Where they were from, the upperclass of any gender were usually literate, whereas the lower classes generally were not. For all of Panem’s faults in general and divisions of rich and poor in particular, this was not one of them. The illiterates had all been sent to other districts. The novelty of the foreigners’ arrival had somewhat supplanted the entertainment function of the Games, and Mayor Undersee was one of many who found this to be a significant improvement. It was amusing to watch foreigners adapt to life in Panem, much better than seeing natives suffer an early death. A pair of tall muscular black-haired teenagers, a boy and girl, had been sent to District Two. That pair sitting in a reading class with six year olds was one of the iconic images of this year.

 

The Capitol did not want district people knowing much about life in the other districts. The odds were in Joffrey Lannister’s favor, becoming a favorite of President Snow in the Capitol. Some of the other newcomers would turn nineteen on or before the next Reaping Day. The rest had been registered for the next reaping, with the usual amounts of slips for their respective ages. Well, some things remained normal and usual this year, but would the exceptional events be able to change Panem’s unacceptable way of doing things?


	9. Katniss III

            Katniss and the rest of the tributes were all savoring a reprieve from a death sentence that shouldn’t have been received in the first place.

 

The more Katniss thought about it, she would have had a hard time going home at Peeta’s expense, since he cared so deeply about her that he would have been glad to make that happen. How much he loved her did not feel diminished or less real because of how long it took him to say it. She was used to seeing how much love had hurt her mother, but she was starting to see how uplifting it could be. Peeta was starting to warm her like no fire ever had.

 

Romance had positively transformed two of their comrades as well. Glimmer and Cato also knew that wearing the victor’s crown would have left the other dead. They were overjoyed to have each other instead, a monumental change after dreaming about the victor life since they were young. “I thought you a brute, and her a pretty face. I was right enough, but seeing the two of you together shows you’re so much more,” Katniss told Cato.

“Heck, she showed me I was more than that,” Cato confessed.

 

Clove and Marvel were still frustrated about seeing Glimmer and Cato with other people. They were initially angry about their glory being denied. Clove was coming to realize that her life had been saved - even someone like her was hardly guaranteed to win the Games, because the arena contained several like her. Marvel was experiencing a similar enlightenment. He was smarter here, relatively speaking, by simply being functionally literate.

 

“Who’s the man and who’s the wench?” a fellow inn guest japed at Peeta and Katniss.

“I’m fiercely devoted to this woman I love,” Peeta explained, “and if that isn’t man enough for you, maybe me outwrestling you would get the point across,” Mellark challenged. He was calm, sweet, kind, but no pushover.

            “I believe it, Mellark,” Katniss overheard Cato say, “the way you were throwing weights around the Training Center.”

            “Bet I could whoop both y’all asses,” Thresh drawled. He had already made his physical strength clear, but was becoming markedly more cheerful as the time passed since arriving here. His negative attitude had been an act to protest the spectacle of the Games, passed off as a silent-but-deadly angle. Thresh’s life was also brightened by Rue, though his own sister was younger by a few minutes instead of a few years. Also, here they were equals amongst the tributes instead of being downtrodden even for Panem.

 

The traveling party had few problems with outsiders. It was not the sort of group that invited trouble. When other people realized who Lord Stark was, they also figured out that accosting such an important man would bring trouble that similar offenses against a commoner wouldn’t. And that’s with important men who cared, and who weren’t committing the offenses themselves, in both cases unlike the Peacekeepers the Panem residents were familiar with.

 

If Lord Stark’s authority and respect didn’t get the point across, what did was a blade deadlier than Cato’s in the hands of a man who had actually carried it into battle. “I’ve carried this through two wars,” he said, tapping the hilt. He explained the first was a successful resistance against a cruel ruler. _Would Panem ever see such? Few dared to even dream of it any more,_ Katniss thought.The second sounded like the traitors really were at fault, pirates returning to their old ways. That Theon Cato so easily outdueled was the son of their leader. For obvious reasons, the tributes did not care for a child being used as a pawn in the aftermath of rebellion. Yet the nobleman before them at least held to a nobler ideal, explaining “May he grow up to be a better man than his father”.

 

“Some of you have had superb masters-at-arms,” Lord Stark observed. _A fancy name for my poacher father,_ Katniss thought. “Your actions at Winterfell demonstrated as much. It ought show itself in a real fight, yet mayhaps not.” The Career tributes’ trainers, many of whom were past victors, had been less humble.

 

The sensory impact of this country was a wonderful novelty. Katniss supposed any countryside looked better at a few miles per hour on horseback instead of at a couple hundred miles per hour from a train car. Katniss thought it was the best reminder she’d get of the woods outside District Twelve. Many of her fellow tributes also saw nature, if only via working outside for the Capitol. It was doubly impressive to those used to the factories of Eight and to some extent Three, Five and Six.

 

The technology or lack thereof here was not so amazing. “I know something of our devices, more than most, but not enough to make them here,” Regina lamented.

“We explain what we can,” Nathan offered.

 

“Better medicine?” Eddard wondered. “The sights, sounds and smells of the sick and injured are certainly one of the grimmer parts of life, war or not, and the maesters and healers can only do so much.”

 

“I’m glad I already had two of my wisdom teeth out,” Marvel announced.

“That would explain a lot,” Glimmer japed.

“Thank you for that, Lady Adams,” Marvel said dismissively. “Anyway, it really helps to get shot up with numbing agents first. Once that stuff kicked in, I barely felt the chompers pop out. A few hours for the wounds to heal up, a few days to make sure they didn’t get infected, and my mouth was fine again. Ran my father half an aureus, and that was that. I still have the rest of my teeth, although they’ve been patched up a lot.” District folks without much food to chew with their teeth, let alone decent dentists, still rinsed and picked their teeth. Even rich Westerosi often had pockmarked smiles.

 

“That aureus sounds like a gold coin of yours,” Vayon Poole assessed in a dour professional tone.

“It is, yet I carry none to show you. We enter our arena with only clothing and don’t find money there,” Marvel agreed and admitted.

“Speak for yourself,” Cato countered. “In case you forgot, which you probably did, we can carry a small nonweapon into the arena with us.” Katniss thought of the gold bird pin on her shirt; it had been a gift from her friend Madge, but went further than that. Rue had a wooden star charm on a piece of woven grass, as proud of it as some girls were of a diamond on a gold chain. Some of the other tributes, boy or girl, also reached for their tokens. “I chose a coin,” Cato continued, “as did my father. This is a full aureus,” he said, holding the piece in his palm.

“That sounds like a man wearing a lady’s favor in a fight. The coin looks to be the better part of one of our gold dragons,” Vayon Poole assessed. The gold Katniss, Rue and Bran got from Robert for revealing Cersei and Jaime’s secret did have a dragon stamped on it.

 

“So old-fashioned,” Glimmer muttered, scrubbing dirty clothes that had been dunked in a hot water bucket.

“Maybe for the rich districts,” Katniss retorted, “just another day in the lives of us poor folks from out east.”

“Miss Katniss is right again!” Rue agreed.

 

“Arya, your aunt Lyanna would have been proud of how well you ride,” Eddard told his youngest daughter. Katniss supposed that was to be expected of someone who had sat a saddle since they were young. She and her fellow Panem natives seemed like they could barely hold on, let alone command the magnificent beasts. High heels would have actually done some good for once, the curve helping the foot stay in the stirrup. Katniss could’ve even stood up and used her bow. Glimmer couldn’t use one even on solid ground, but was content to sit in the saddle and watch her new friend Sansa move about gracefully on the steed.

 

The riding eventually came to an end at a city even larger than the Capitol. It had hills within it as opposed to surrounding it. The tributes’ noses were assaulted by the fact that it could be a far less glamorous place, yet it seems to have its own glorious architecture. As a gate surrounded by dragon imagery opened, Lord Eddard Stark announced to his daughters, servants and guests “Welcome to King’s Landing”.


	10. Robb III

Robb Stark and his fellows had received a warm welcome in District Twelve. Recognizing the truth of life here, if only in Jon’s whispers to Gale, had earned them a lot of respect from the smallfolk who lived that grim reality, or died in it.

 

From what he could gather, all of the visitors from Westeros and Essos had been well-received. Some too much so. “I fear Coriolanus Snow is going to make Joffrey Lannister into even more of an insufferable bastard,” Jon muttered.

 

A certain group seemed particularly welcoming. Robb saw how the wenches looked at him and his brother, bawdier than even the more forthright Westerosi women. Their customs were not so concerned about bastards or whether a bride remained a maiden, yet this did not give Robb any plans to be reckless. Here, people became men grown and women grown at eighteen instead of sixteen. Those younger were restricted to bedding those of similar age. _That did indeed call for caution_ , Robb thought. He, Jon and Gale would have to be blind to not notice the attention, and their presence probably made the wenches gladder to have functional eyesight.

 

Poor eyes did not seem to be such a problem here anyway. Some people wore on their faces what looked like Myrish lenses suspended in metal frames, with hooks to hold them onto the ears and padding to keep them from scraping the wearer’s nose. People wouldn’t have to occupy a hand to hold a Myrish lens tube. They could help archers be better shots, Robb noticed. Sam suggested that they could help people read. Artifice could do so much to alleviate human suffering, if the artificers cared to, which here they often didn’t.

 

They found even the rudimentary science lectures fascinating. The history was another matter. It sounded like what a lord or king with an inflated view of himself wanted his smallfolk to think regardless of whether it was true or not.

 

            Robb pondered why the Capitol hadn’t ordered a replacement battle between him and the other arrivals. He came up with a multitude of reasons, certainly not the kind of thing their maesters wanted their students to think about.

It was a punishment of and a warning to the smallfolk scattered throughout the country. Nobody had really grown attached to them yet, so it wouldn’t have had as much effect in this regard. _Maybe it would later_ , Robb worried, which helped explain why they would be put at risk in future years.

It was also a spectacle for the bloodthirsty, and it would have been less of a show with the weapons stockpile gone with the original group.

The whole thing was horribly unfair to begin with, and the competition was rather unbalanced, especially to hear Gale tell it. However, they gave it a veneer of balance. Valyrian steel blades or superb riding horses did not lend much credence to those who wanted to keep their plausible deniability at least somewhat plausible.

Or direwolves. Grey Wolf and Ghost would have eliminated the twenty-two besides their masters, that much was certain. To fight each other was a thought Robb was dearly glad to not have to consider too much.

 

Gale was an accomplished poacher. It was understandable when the alternate fate was starvation. Gale was glad to show his new friends the grounds. The metal wall had a multitude of holes in it.

Jon was welcome on the lands of the Night’s Watch and those of his lord father before that, but he just as surely knew how to point a longbow at the game here. Grey Wind and Ghost also took well to their new surroundings. The wild dogs in these woods even seemed to follow them, as regular wolves sometimes did with direwolves. It was safer for the multitudes of non-Stark blood inside the wall to leave the direwolves outside of it. How in the hells they got the beasts through the wall Robb didn’t know, so he thought it wise to not bring them in and out of it so often.

The local authorities posed no danger to their poaching activities; they even remained some of the best customers for what the boys didn’t eat themselves. Undisciplined _opposition_ soldiers are a _good_ thing, Robb thought, recalling his lord father’s lessons on warcraft. Jon had similar lessons in mind. Samwell’s lord father was another superb general, the only one of the Mad King’s lords to inflict a defeat on Robert, but Sam not taking to such pursuits was the problem. It was cruelly ironic to have sent Sam to the Watch to be rid of him.

It was sometimes a challenge to have plenty to sell, considering that Samwell Tarly was one of the people with them. Years of feasting habit could not be so easily changed, whether in mind or body. He had to eat something, although less of it, to have the energy to do anything. He couldn’t show himself too much, even when trying to sweat it off, because he was conscious of offending people with his size.

 

Gale’s mother was a laundress and in the course of her work found garments for Jeyne and Talla to mend. That was the plan, anyway, and so far it was going well for all concerned. Gale was picking up one such load. “If my dear half-sister Arya were here, she’d be out in the woods with us instead of in there doing needlework,” Jon remarked, pointing to the young ladies’ workroom.

“My friend Katniss is a girl like that too. I even first met her in the woods,” Gale replied. “Yet she is not here at the moment,” he added sarcastically.

“Mayhaps they’ll make fast friends back where we’re from,” Jon suggested.

“You talk of her as if she is more than a friend,” Sam pointed out to Gale.

“Very much so,” Gale agreed. “Over the past few years, me and her grew as close as two can get without being lovers. And as far as I’m concerned, I wish me and her were that too.”

 

They all missed who they had left behind or who had traveled without them, yet they also were all finding something in the new people they’d met.


	11. Cato I

The Panem visitors were welcomed to a red castle by their host’s host. They were given apartments below the man they were a guest of. Eddard had work to do, but Robert wanted to party, probably one reason he stuck his friend with the work.

 

Lust was certainly part of how he celebrated. Robert had been warned to stay away from his friend’s female guests. “Your Grace, they are not whores and not the sort of wenches to be impressed by your royal status,” Cato overheard. _And one of them is my wife, not yours,_ he added to himself.

            “You’re here to give me harsher truths than that,” the king admitted.

           

Gluttony was another.Eddard said that his friend and sovereign had once been a very healthy man, a keen fighter in the war that brought him to power, but he had put those days behind him. Cato had long since resolved to not let himself become a fat old man, and seeing a result of a lack of such resolve only steeled his own.

 

Robert wanted to stage a large tournament to celebrate his friend’s appointment, regardless of what that friend thought of it. “His Grace insists on offering excessive prize money,” Eddard explained. That was the first time Cato and his comrades had heard of a government official trying to control spending on the amusements of the rich. “Mayhaps it should at least be won by people I know.” Cato was pleased to hear this – he wanted some of those riches to replace that attraction of being a Victor.

 

Like the Capitol, the people here were amused by watching fights. That did not seem so bothersome when the fighters were not forced into it or made to die. It did not offend the smallfolk either, and they came in droves to watch without being prodded by Peacekeepers.

 

The actual events would start early tomorrow morning and run most of the day. The tributes liked the advanced fabric and familiar styling of their arena outfits, but they’d blend in by dressing up tomorrow. Vayon Poole the steward took most of the tributes to clothing shops for more Westerosi apparel. They had already been given some from the Winterfell stores, but those were simple garb to travel or work in, and wear while nicer pieces were being laundered.

The castle servants were surprised at how often the foreigners bathed, but even every few days was infrequent for them. At any rate, the night before the big big big day, Glimmer emerged from a tub and picked out one of the dresses Catelyn had given her. It wasn’t a nightgown; Glimmer was simply doing something while waiting for her skin to finish drying.

Just the same, Cato came over to her and said “No need to put anything on, because I’ll just want to see it come off again.”

As he wrapped his arm around her teats, she lightheartedly protested with “I just got dry and now I’m getting wet again”. Cato was cued to check her cunt; his wife knew her body and did not lie about it; that was for certain. “Now get out of your not-so-small clothes,” she added.

His member belonged in her; he knew that just as surely. Even to simply climb on top of a body like that was electric despite the lack of electricity here, and he felt himself about to fill her as soon as his tongue touched hers, and her head and her hips arched back at the same time.

 

Joust

 

Regina had read of jousts, but the massive warhorses and lances, and the richly decorated armor, had to be seen to be believed. That armor, the families it symbolized and the men who wore it obviously did not draw any particular attention from the foreigners unfamiliar with the history, but they still took general interest. The event itself was not for those who had first set ahorse two moons’ turns prior, that was for sure. Three of Ned’s guards fancied themselves good enough combat riders, along with 125 others. Cato was no mathematician, but he recognized that 128 was a convenient number for scheduling single-elimination competitions.

 

“Those make my spear look small by comparison,” Marvel marveled.

            “So does Cato,” Glimmer guffawed. “And even if you were comparably sized, he is not so much of an idiot.”

            The javelins they carried were the same model, from the Cornucopia, and one of the locals also saw a rude jape in it. “He has a bigger member, is that it? Are the wenches in your realm usually this bawdy?” one of the locals wondered aloud.

            “Unfortunately not,” Peeta announced.

            “Yes, you or Katniss’ friends back home would have preferred that,” Cato observed. “Maybe you aren’t particularly bad at wenching, rather she’s a particularly challenging one. I understand why you’d want to focus on her.” _Glimmer had taught Cato how much the one right woman could mean to a man, but damned if he was going to admit that publically._ What he did say was “but she still isn’t as pretty as my wife.”

            “Yes she is,” Peeta insisted.

 

            The tributes were getting used to tall people being relatively common here, but one heralded as Gregor Clegane was a shock even to the locals. Cato, Marvel and Thresh all stood at well above six feet and he made the all look like Tyrion Lannister by comparison. His weight was distributed over his eight feet and looked to be mostly muscle, but he still made the big district boys look like waifs like Rue by comparison. Though with Miss Clayton, Cato knew from training the look of people putting on healthy weight and was glad to tell Katniss as much.

 

Gregor faced a boy Hugh in blue who seemed to have as little business in this competition as the foreign visitors did. The young knight wearing a crescent moon seemed lucky to walk away. Gregor faced his younger brother Sandor Clegane in the second round. His older sibling seemed to enjoy sending him into the dirt just the same. Thoros relished defeating Gregor in turn. _Gregor, if even I think you’re too violent, that’s scary_ , Cato thought.

One of Ned’s men made it to the second round, the same Jory Cassel who had found them. In the third he was paired up against another man who was not a knight, and was judged the winner after they both stayed on their horses three times. The next two rounds, he got a clear win the first time.

 

Of the six remaining in the Kingsguard after Jaime was evicted, four entered. All of them and the king’s brother Renly won easily in the first three rounds. Were they truly superb at this contest, or did their opponents think it wise not to embarrass them? Loras Tyrell had the ability and audacity to defeat not one but three of the royal guards. However, the other was too much for Prince Renly.

 

Loras rushed to help Renly out of the dirt. “Ser Loras once squired for Prince Renly, and apparently hasn’t forgotten,” Eddard explained.

“Methinks there’s something more between those two,” Clove whispered to Cato with her usual sarcasm.

“Yeah, reminds me of Ruby and Carol,” Cato agreed. Rubeus London definitely did not have the tough-guy demeanor typical of District Two men, and was wholly uninterested in women. Entering the Career training academy, later the arena and Victors Village, Rubeus was as respected as anyone else. Cato wondered if Loras and Renly took to fighting partially for similar reasons. The District Two tributes couldn’t remember the former name of Rubeus’ man Carolus though.

Apparently the natives couldn’t or wouldn’t see it. The visitors who noticed didn’t think it a scandal and didn’t wish to make it one. They didn’t want to torment the men themselves with an unattainable vision of how they could be treated better. Loras was exceedingly handsome, and many of the native females swooned over him, none more so than Ned’s daughter Sansa herself. Loras tossed plain flowers into the crowd. He handed brightly colored ones to the guest of honor’s first daughter.

 

The second daughter would’ve rather had his armor; she already had a sword. Before Jon left for the Wall, he had Mikken the Winterfell blacksmith forge Arya a sword suited to her small stature. Therein lay the problem – many people, mayhaps including Cato himself, could teach a brute force hack and slash style of swordfighting, but that’s not what she needed to learn. “ _Stick ‘em with the pointy end_ , Jon told me,” Arya explained. “After all, that is what you do with a Needle. I do not sew, at least not very well, so this be my needlework,” she japed.

 

            “Jory Cassel tilting against Thoros of Myr,” the herald called. The first time, they stayed ahorse but both lances turned to splinters, as had happened many times today. Squires placed new ones in their hands. The austere gray northerner defeated the fiery easterner this time.

 

“Loras Tyrell tilting against Barristan Selmy,” he called again. The legendary old man’s experience nearly proved a match for the young talent, the solid white holding against the triple yellow rose until the fifth run.

 

Most weren’t quite sure of how Jory made it through the first six rounds, so it was an absolute shock when he flattened the legend in the making before him. Loras’ lance had been perfectly placed, but Jory managed to swerve inside to keep the blow to his shield arm a glancing one, while still keeping his own point aimed at Loras. The four-and-twenty stood up and started a mixed chant of “Jory!” and “Cassel!” that soon spread throughout much of the stands. Ned had stayed seated and quiet but was not quite his usual reserved self welcoming his guardcaptain back from the field.

 

Archery Competition

 

Katniss could not resist the fact that the archery competition did not prohibit female entrants. Glimmer wisely avoided the embarrassment of anything having to do with ranged weapons. _My wife has many virtues, but that is decidedly not one of them_ , Cato thought to himself. As Katniss approached the targets, Arya developed a nerve to follow. “One of the new Hand’s household won the joust; shall one of his House win this competition?” one of the tournament officials remarked.

 

They’d shoot ten arrows per round, starting at ten paces and going up by ten per round until the final at one hundred. The highest scoring half of the competition, including ties, moved forward.

 

Arya and Katniss took turns in approaching the targets so they could share Katniss’ advanced bow. The rules did allow competitors bringing their own weapons, a way to test the quality thereof as well as skill in using them. Some would have an advantage with the quality of their wooden bows, too.

 

There was one of golden-colored wood in the hands of Jalabhar Xho, a man as dark as Thresh. Such people were not seen often around here. Cato learned that the few of them here, such as this archer, were mostly travelers from far to the south or east. When they were present in larger numbers, a system of treating them poorly because of their appearance often developed, as Thresh, Rue and Katniss knew all too well, one reason they were glad to be here.

 

Jalabhar dressed in an array of bright colors. He was clearly one of the most challenging competitors. Balon Swann, a physically imposing man by any standard except Gregor Clegane’s, was another. He had lost in the joust after winning against one of the Winterfell men, and it seemed the odds favored him better in this competition. A skinny redhead named Anguy was the other significant challenger.

 

Many showed what little business they had shooting even at ten paces. Some of those who definitely belonged in the yard split one arrow with the next. Arya was not _that_ good, and the metallic shafts she borrowed from Katniss did not allow of that trick anyway. A few who could hit the targets at ten could not at twenty or thirty. Arya’s arrows arrived at forty, but not enough of them close enough to the center of the target to remain in the top of half of the scores. The girl was still congratulated for being one of the last half a hundred remaining, especially by her new friend and shooting tutor who was one of the twenty-six remaining.

 

Katniss needed her bow’s power and range to make it through the next few rounds, sometimes barely advancing. It was no surprise that she faced the other three standouts in the final. Ser Balon started his volley relatively poorly with an average finish. Anguy’s ninth arrow was perfectly shot, putting him past the total score of Balon’s ten. Katniss was similarly accurate three times, and her average eighth arrow put her into the lead. _At this rate, would Jalabhar win on his seventh?_ He would not. Katniss would. His first two shots were brilliant, but his next three arrows flew badly. He needed a near-perfect performance to recover and didn’t get it.

 

“Seven hells, that wench can shoot!” an anonymous voice called out, speaking for most of the shocked crowd. Cato was just glad she didn’t have to shoot at him.

 

“Katniss of House Everdeen,” the herald trumpted.

“Make that Shack Everdeen,” the winner japed.

“You certainly are not poor anymore,” he pointed out. “Trueborn, though?”

“Aye, my parents married for love and other people caused them no end of grief for it,” she explained. “I honestly didn’t expect to win, but it’s a relief that the odds are in my favor for once.” The archer curtsied. “My father was a hunter; at his hands I learned this art.”

 

Melee

 

            The upcoming melee seemed like what Careers were made for, just with men yielding instead of children getting a death cannon.

 

Clove’s knives were best suited to individual targets or small groups, so the valuable ammunition could be more easily retrieved. Could even she hit small gaps in armor instead of unarmored bodies? Her small stature was much more of a limitation against dozens of professionals. Glimmer would also have been outnumbered, especially considering her focus on short handheld knives.

 

However, the two young men were glad to enter. Cato and Marvel were two of the few on foot, but the reach of their spears was more than a match for the warhorses. They were bigger and stronger than the breeds ridden on the road, but their riders’ swords still couldn’t reach the foreigners before the staves struck. Cato felt it odd to go through most of a fight with his own blade sheathed at his side. They were unarmored, not owning a suit and not used to wearing it, and took advantage of the extra mobility.

 

            Another fighter, this one on horseback himself, had a different strategy for the opposing cavalry. His presence was familiar from the joust. Horses feared Thoros’ flaming sword, and the frightened beasts left their riders in no position to do anything but yield, assuming they even stayed in the saddle. As with the joust, men being unhorsed would produce a lot of injuries, yet this added being bludgeoned with assorted objects.

 

An hour into the slugfest, Marvel was outnumbered by opposing riders, and although he defeated the first, he had to yield to the second. Cato conserved his strength through the next hour. This was positively brutal to someone who had trained to chase down opponents for short duels. He let Thoros eliminate most of the other competitors for him. Unmounted men were not intimidated by the green glow, and those used to the technology of Panem were not so awed by the trick. Cato’s conditioned arms swinging arena steel cut Thoros’ softening blade clean in half. “I yield! Apparently the blacksmiths where you’re from are as good as the bowyers!” And so Ned’s guests and guards won the tournament held in his honor.

 

Aftermath

           

Jory Cassel was glad to remain in his lord’s service. Anguy, not making himself wealthy on the archery range, gladly accepted an offer to join those guards. Cato found himself in a goldsmith’s shop replacing a ring of Glimmer’s. One of the District One female victors had given her a piece of jewelry to use as a token, but it got confiscated because unbeknownst to Glimmer it concealed a poisoned spike. Jory entered the shop soon afterwards. “I have no wife, nor daughters nor sisters, but my niece Beth ought appreciate this,” he announced, pointing to a piece.

 

“Marvel and I agreed that if one of us won, we’d give a couple percent of our winnings to the other. Now, in a way, it seems fair that I end up with the same amount of money as our other winner. Five hundred each to the twenty besides me, Glimmer, Fire Girl or Bread Boy,” Cato announced to the other tributes.

 

            Marvel had some ideas as to how to start spending his. “How in the seven hells will I be able to find a whore in this town, though?” he japed. King’s Landing was full of them, especially for an event like this. Like most tradespeople, they went where the business was. Cato overheard Marvel talking to the District Four boy Alex about it afterwards. Alex was one of those youngsters that wanted to act like the big boys, which included being quite receptive to Marvel’s salacious talk.

 

 _He took a whore into a room. She said her name was Pussywillow._ She was willing with her pussy, that was for sure, but Cato had heard that guys who had to pay for it sometimes found gals who used appropriately inappropriate aliases.

 _Marvel said “Pretend your name is Glimmer”._ Okay, that’s kinda sad, One. _She hesitated and Marvel cut her off by saying “Shut up and take my money and then take my cock.”_

 _“_ Glimmer _likes men with attitude like that,” she replied._

_“There we go,” Marvel acknowledged. He dropped his breeches and she shucked her dress – as an expedient to her work, she did not bother with smallclothes. As he thrust into the whore, he said “How does Glimmer like this spear?”_

_“Very skilled, m’lord,” she responded. He had a few before, but he also had the brains to recognize the whore was just delivering good customer service, but that left his mind at the point he delivered his seed into her._

 

            A local commoner approached Cato. “Whose favor did you wear?” he asked of the armband.

            “It’s a braided lock of hair from Glimmer. My wife. Gods, I love calling her that,” he answered in a tone that was downright lighthearted for him. The herald was no Caesar Flickerman and this was no national television broadcast, but Cato still knew what to do.

            However, that woman was not looking particularly glamorous vomiting her dinner into the dust. “You got her with child already?” one of the crowd suggested. “The seed is strong.”

            “Everything’s strong about my big bad Cato!” Glimmer said once she recovered.

            “I hold a lot of gold now, and I was far from as destitute as some of my fellow foreigners, but I truly became wealthy two moons’ turns ago when I married her,” he said, meaning every word of it.


	12. Katniss IV

Even Katniss was disgusted at how the poor of this city lived. “These pot shops and bowls of brown make Greasy Sae’s soup stall in the Hob seem like respectable cuisine,” she muttered. She thought she would have had to explain the District Twelve black market references to Peeta, but he understood, and to people from elsewhere, it may as well have been just another shop.

 

The Man Grown With The Bread

 

Peeta was also shocked by the depths of poverty here, either although or because he had observed instead of lived District Twelve deprivation. He saw some fellow tributes partaking of King’s Landing luxuries and developed a rather nobler idea for using some of his gold. He’d become the man grown with the bread. Katniss of all people would know what even a couple loaves could mean. Now they had the money for as many as they could buy. There was no Mrs. Mellark in the way either, no witch of District Twelve who had spiteful hate for poor swarthy people in general and Everdeens in particular.

 

The streets here at least had descriptive names. Flour Street was just a bit further up the hill, and there they found several bakeries. Katniss and Peeta both went in one of them, and she listened while he placed the order. “Two loaves,” her district partner said. With his sense of humor, he probably knew full well he was making an inside jape.

 

“Four stars,” the clerk responded. For once Peeta was receiving a price quote instead of giving one. Katniss remembered what Mr. Poole had quickly explained. Those were the big copper coins. They weren’t quite so big as Panem’s half assarions, but it was hard to tell, since the coins here were so lumpy. A few credits for the bread seemed reasonable. _Even Priscilla Mellark wasn’t so stingy, rather she had it in for the daughter of the woman her husband couldn’t get over._

 

He threw one to Katniss. _Of course he did._ She held it in the middle and bit into the end. Even that grip was somewhat painful after she had strained her arm so at the archery range earlier in the day. She wasn’t used to drawing a bowstring at such long ranges so many times in a row. Her attention back on the bread, she noticed the grain was smoother than she was used to. As Peeta munched on the other loaf, he reported that it was rougher than the stuff he made back home. Either way, it was suitable to buy in large quantities and distribute to at least some of the beggars who lined the alleyways nearby.  


Peeta went back up to the counter. “How many loaves for a dragon?” he asked. Seven stars to the silver stag and 210 stags to the dragon made for confusing math. Ten upon itself made for much easier arithmetic, and that’s how most counting was done there as in Panem. However, they literally worshipped the number seven here, and their money was just one reflection of that. Most people in the south thought that way; the few in the north who did often came from elsewhere, like Mrs. Stark.

 

Katniss finished the math - there were 1,470 stars to the dragon, so at two stars per loaf, a dragon could buy 735 loaves. The merchant could do at least that much math himself, and did not try to cheat Peeta by offering less than that. Instead, he had the sense to offer more, an even thousand.

 

A crowd quickly gathered, but it stayed under control thanks to its recent lesson on what Cato could do with a sword and what Marvel could with a spear. Jory’s lance and Katniss’ bow were not suited to these confined spaces, but all the same, respect for the charitable tourney stars accomplished as much as the threat of force. Jory, remaining on the Stark staff, led a backup squad of other Stark guards.

 

Peeta wanted a look at how their bakeries worked, and that would help with an even larger iteration of this project. The main differences seemed to be ovens fueled by wood fires instead of gas, and cookware that decidedly did not have nonstick surfaces. So the morning rush was especially grueling, but people just as much needed to eat here, and he was glad to help them do that. Katniss admired his caring going even beyond the woman he loved.

 

Another Move

 

            The new Hand suggested that the new residents of Westeros move yet again. Most of them seemed pleased with any place that entailed remaining aboveground.

 

            “Bear Island is one of the few areas in this realm governed by a woman in her own right. Lady Mormont is one of my trusted vassals. That seems like a good place for you,” Ned said to Katniss amongst his assembled guests. “I assume your lover wishes to follow you.” They both gladly confirmed.

 

Clove added “sounds like a good idea to me too”. That environment would probably be good for what passed for Miss Hawkins’ sanity. It ought be an improvement over how women were treated in much of the rest of the country. Also, Glimmer and Cato would not be there. While those three had remained civil so far, keeping their distance would help make sure of it.

            “Can I go with Miss Katniss too?” Rue asked.

            “I’m with the little one,” Thresh announced.

 

            Logroll Sawyer had a different ‘little one’ in mind. “Do you how where that Tyrion Lannister lives?”

            “Casterly Rock,” he answered. “You’re a woman grown” _Here at least_ “so seek him out if you insist. The road there is the one that starts just north of the tourney ground.” Sawmill also figured he should follow a district partner.

 

            “Nathan, I agree that the Maesters’ Citadel is the place for a bookish young man, especially one without lands or titles to forsake,” Ned went on.

            “May I become a wise old man like Luwin,” he assented. “Sad they don’t allow smart girls like Regina there.”

            “They indeed don’t,” Ned replied. “You’ll be shown along the Roseroad to the southwest. The two from your fishing town would mayhaps want to go to a port, which Oldtown is, one of the greatest.”

 

            “I shall seriously consider if life on that Wall suits me,” Marvel thought aloud. _Because the woman you’d most want didn’t want you and with good reason._

            “Aye, many men have found the Night’s Watch honorable, like two of my recent relatives. Like them, you have no position of nobility to forsake, no crimes to run from.” Their black castle was at the other end of this country from the red castle they were currently in, back up north, but so was Bear Island. So this part of the group of tributes wouldn’t split up for awhile.


	13. Mya I

            Mya Stone was gods knew how many leagues from the realm of her birth, like 47 others, but part of this place still felt like home. There were impressive mountain ranges here too, maybe even more so. The setting sun disappeared behind the mountains each day, whereas in the Vale there seemed to be only one significant peak on the horizon. The Giant’s Lance, several thousand feet above the valleys of the Vale, stood alone in piercing the clouds. Here, several peaks attacked the sky in a massed charge.

 

There were many above four-and-ten thousand feet here. ‘Fourteen’ was how they said it here, putting the ‘four’ and ‘ten’ in a different order and dragging out the ‘ten’. Gods knew Westerosi spoke Common in plenty of accents, as she had learned in escorting travelers up the treacherous paths to the Eyrie, the House Arryn castle astride the Giant’s Lance.

 

            Nearly a league in the air! Though they didn’t use that word either, they often knew the idea as ‘three miles’, sometimes ‘nearly five kilometers’. The word ‘league’ was ancient history here, something Panem didn’t care much about. They didn’t really study other realms either. There were dim stories of a group of mountains across the sea, twice as high as these.

 

Many people from this part of Panem became the nation’s soldiers. The Westerosi and Essosi noted with great interest that they had a whole army of veteran professionals, instead of a few knights supported by masses of temporary local levies. They committed for twenty years, rather than either their whole life or one campaign. During their service, they were forbidden from taking spouses or having children, a restriction placed on only a few extraordinary orders in Westeros.

 

They didn’t even follow gold like a similarly disciplined mercenary company would. They had no loyalties but their king. _He may call himself a president, and their local lords may call themselves mayors, but I see no particular difference_ , Mya mused.

 

Mya noticed that while the vast majority of them were men, women in the white armor were hardly unheard of. She was no warrior, but did appreciate how it was accepted rather than disdained for girls like her to wear simple, practical clothes usually associated with boys, and otherwise partake of what was labeled boyish behavior.

 

That actually seemed common in Panem, especially for District Two. Mya’s high-spiritedness seemed to be making her many friends in this place of retired soldiers and the families they had belatedly started.

 

            Panem had mechanical wheeled devices besides the trains that had scattered the four-and-twenty around the realm. Nevertheless, some mountain paths were so treacherous that they were still navigated with animals, and thus Mya ended up with work similar to what she had back home. So did Gendry. Swords were an anachronism here, mainly fodder for their fighting arena, but someone still needed to make the few they used there. Even as a mere apprentice blacksmith from a foreign land, he would still be better suited to the work than most.

 

            Both of them were bastards, but that didn’t matter here. King Robert never officially acknowledged her as his daughter, but she and everybody around her had known it. She even dimly remembered a man like him from when she was but a babe. Mayhaps he had been forestalled by Queen Cersei’s jealousy. Gendry only barely remembered his mother, let alone his father.

 

            Children here, bastards or not, could be given the last name of their mother or father or a combination of the two. Upon arrival here, she had registered herself as a Baratheon. Her mother hadn’t had a last name, something simply unheard of here. Gendry called himself a Waters, at least able to use the Crownlands bastard name. To use a trueborn name seemed to mean the world to Jon Snow, now Stark like his beloved father Ned. Most of the others who had come with them were trueborn, or smallfolk with no names to draw on. Daenerys’ handmaidens had been taken in by the District Eleven mayor and his family, and now bore their names.

 

            Amongst their wondrous technology was a way of analyzing blood as a way of identifying people. Their government had samples from all its citizens, which the four-and-twenty from Westeros and Essos were now. To their maesters, it was more evidence that similar humans lived in both realms.

 

The pinprick on the finger had been nothing. _Especially for me and the other women who’ve flowered_ , Mya thought. _Well, one of the commoner lads is a butcher’s boy_ , she remembered. _Him too, in his own way._ None of the boys highborn or low, bastard or true, had seen much combat, save for Jon and Sam of the Night’s Watch, and that had been a matter of ice and fire rather than traditional bloodshed.

 

            The results of the analysis were something else. Joffrey did not match her, so he must not really be a Baratheon after all, a Lannister like Daenerys had guessed upon their arrival. That was his mother’s House, so who was his father, if not Robert?

 

Daenerys herself matched Jon, but not Robb. Jon and Robb matched, but not the way they expected boys with the same father to. That was a terrific puzzle, one you needed to know Westerosi history to be able to figure out. Mya had been alive at the time, but a babe in arms, too young to remember it, but had learnt about it later. Four-and-ten years ago, Daenerys’ brother Rhaegar had abducted Ned’s sister Lyanna, an action that stirred discontent with the Targaryens into open rebellion; Lyanna had died during the war. Mayhaps she died in childbed with Rhaegar’s son and Ned raised the nephew as his own.

 

Ned’s behavior could be publically explained as avoiding jealousy on Robert’s part - Robert had wanted Lyanna too. _Granted, he hadn’t wanted her enough to stay away from my mother_ , Mya thought. Many of the Westerosi, including Mya herself, knew there was more to the situation, but also knew it was wise to not speak of it. Around these lords and soldiers, it was wise to leave out talk of rebellion.

 

Robert had sent agents after Daenerys and her other brother Viserys in exile, before Daenerys ended up on this second exile. The current Baratheons and Targaryens were second or third cousins through descent from Aegon V. The connection was known as Robert’s claim to the throne beyond right of conquest. The exiles to Panem simply hadn’t thought about it much until learning that more of their number were amongst those descendants.

 

To Mya, the biggest news from the blood tests was obviously that she matched with Gendry. It was unsurprising that Robert sired bastards besides her, but it was unexpected that one of them had traveled all this way with her. Part of Mya, a very womanly part of her, thought it was a darn shame that Gendry was her half-brother. He was already quite the handsome lad and would likely become even more so as he grew. The time in the forge had done his musculature quite a favor, quite a favor indeed.

 

She was no maid, though. Mychel Redfort had seen to that, and had cared for her for a time after that. Mychel, now knighted, but a squire when he had her, had been far too gallant to leave after taking her maidenhead. Yet as a highborn nobleman, he was destined for a woman of similar status. In a way, it seemed sensible for a couple to have no class difference, to help them get along better by having more in common with each other. Mya and Mychel being together had sure made sense to each of them at the time. He was married off to some Royce or another, an idea he did not care for either. Boys were all but forced into marriage too for the sake of their Houses, though not quite so much as the girls. They had not heard much of each other since. _Well, if he were here, a martial talent like him certainly would be a soldier, restricted from family life for far too long,_ Mya thought.

 

There wasn’t any nobility here, but the upper classes just as surely separated from the lower classes. They mixed somewhat in literal classes. Mya was still surprised that even their smallfolk learnt to read and write as a matter of course. Their fellow students seemed to look up to older children overall. She, Gendry and the other Westerosi smallfolk were being taught alongside children who had passed only a few namedays, about when the highborn received such lessons from their maesters.

 

Here it did not seem to matter much whether a woman had been deflowered. They still disapproved of bedding a man besides one’s husband, but not so much, and bedding a woman besides one’s wife was far less acceptable here. Marriages had even been dissolved on those grounds! Panem’s focus on love matches made adultery less of a concern to begin with, assuming the match held, and District Two people seemed particularly sensible.

 

Mayhaps their wizened medicine helped. They seemed to have better cures for poxes of the cunt, better potions than moon tea either before or after a man’s seed had quickened. Those blood tests could identify the father if the bedding did lead to a birth. Here, death in childbed was almost unheard of, instead of being as sadly commonplace as Westeros!

 

Whatever the explanation, the women here faced far less risk in what they chose to do in the bedchamber. Mya wasn’t sure what choices she’d make there. She was far too occupied with adjusting to this brave new world overall. Well, she found mountains more stable than men. She had the majestic rocks here too. With that familiarity as a base, she figured this place offered new opportunities for the path of her life to take.


	14. Eddard II

            It was decided to summon Stannis’ family to King’s Landing instead of paying a visit to them at Dragonstone. Robert insisted on no more travel, using more profanity than Ned thought necessary. Also, Ned felt that staying in the capital would allow the new Hand to devote more energies to his recently established administration.

 

Who would succeed Stannis, Renly and Shireen to the Iron Throne? Renly, already being in King’s Landing, had been fully informed of the situation, and still had no great interest in siring heirs of his own. His niece was a sickly girl of eight.

 

As far as the maesters could tell, they were the last legitimate descendants of the Baratheon lords, including Steffon, the father of Robert, Stannis and Renly. Robert had won his crown on the battlefield, but in theory through Steffon’s mother Rhaelle, daughter of Aegon V. Aegon V’s only other legitimate descendants were Prince Viserys and Princess Daenerys, and to reinstate that dynasty would be to throw away the victory of four-and-ten years prior.

 

            Yet there were many illegitimate descendants through Robert, and it was a king’s prerogative to legitimize bastards whether or not they be his own. Edric Storm was the only one of Robert’s bastards whose mother was also trueborn nobility. “The realm ought be more accepting of him than the son of a whore or tavern wench,” Ned pointed out. _Or gods know what other type of slattern_ , Ned thought to himself disapprovingly.

 

“Do make sure he travels to King’s Landing along with the others,” Robert said.

“Your Grace?” Ned interjected.

“Yes?” the king responded.

“He is fostered at Storm’s End, not Dragonstone,” Ned pointed out, surprised that he seemed to know more about the king’s child than the king himself. _Well, it was the spymaster Varys who actually sent the boy’s nameday gifts_ , but Ned did not wish to belabor that point.

 

Ned’s own Arya apparently wished to go to Bear Island, whether or not one called it fostering. It seemed a good place for her, now that he dwelled more on the matter, and not only because he was committed to sending her new friend there.

 

“Have them meet on the Kingsroad,” Robert said, reminding his Hand of the affairs at hand.

“Mayhaps they should not travel together, Your Grace,” Eddard insisted. “After all, you gave Delena your seed in Stannis and Selyse’s wedding bed.”

“By the gods, my brother can hold a grudge!” Robert agreed as he reached for yet another flagon of wine. “Summon them separately, then.”

 

“I’ve been meaning to bring some of my bastards to court anyway. Would have, had the Lannister cunt been more abiding,” he continued. Cersei’s disapproval, mayhaps related to her own bastards, was an issue no more. Yet ravens sent to the Eyrie came back with word that Mya of the Vale had disappeared. She was the only one of Robert’s bastards he and Ned knew of besides Edric.

Mayhaps they would find some others, but Robert’s next command to his Hand related to Edric alone. “Prepare a legitimization decree for my seal.”

 

Robert felt no need to get winded repeating his long-winded titles. He knew Ned was aware of them, and told his old friend as much. _After all, I helped him win them_ , Ned told himself.

 

 _And I say them while carrying out executions in my section of his realm._ Robert had never understood that. After all, it was a custom of First Men like the Starks, not those of Valyrian descent like the Baratheons. Also, Robert had craved the thrill of a fight moreso than the bloodshed of delivering the final blow. Ned would see no honor in swinging the sword for Robert – leave that to Ser Ilyn Payne, he thought.

 

            Ned got back to the business of drawing up the decree. “You wish for Edric to come after your current heirs?”

            “Yes, Ned, just write the gods-damned thing,” an exasperated Robert responded. After all, the man did not have patience for the realities of governing. Yet those tasks nevertheless had to be fulfilled. That is how Ned now served, and Jon Arryn before him.

 

_By decree of Robert of the House Baratheon, first of his name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm:_

_Edric Storm, bastard son of Robert Baratheon and Delena Florent, is hereby legitimized into his father’s House. He is to be Robert’s heir only after Robert’s siblings and their lines._

_Done this two hundred and ninety second day of the two hundred ninety seventh year after Aegon’s Landing_

 

            Much had been accomplished in these few lines, Ned thought as Robert pressed his seal into the wax. The other members of the small council in King’s Landing met in their usual chamber of the Red Keep to bear witness – Renly, as his brother’s Master of Laws, Grand Maester Pycelle, Kingsguard Lord Commander Barristan Selmy – if there was a more honorable knight alive, Ned did not know him. His opinions of Master of Coin Petyr Baelish and Master of Whisperers Varys were a different matter, but they were here too.

 

Robert’s Master of Ships, that being Stannis, was not present. The middle Baratheon brother had earned that title, outsmarting and outfighting no less than Victarion Greyjoy and the Iron Fleet when the ironborn had risen against Robert. Stannis’ victory had cleared the way for Robert and Ned to lead the armies landing on the Iron Islands themselves.

 

            So Edric was now fourth in line for the Iron Throne, after Shireen, though a hypothetical future son of Stannis, Renly or even Shireen herself would come ahead of the girl. Sometimes bastards were legitimized when there weren’t any other potential heirs, yet if their parents had other living relatives, it was unclear where the bastard came in the line of succession. Ned made sure to account for that in what he wrote down for Robert.

 

            Some other recent work of his quill may not have held such import for the whole realm, but it was of great interest to the few people concerned. Through ravens to and from Bear Island, he had learned that Lady Maege Mormont was quite interested in playing host to his second daughter and some of his guests.

 

 _It seems some of the girls are forthright by even by the standards of their realm, and your keep is in my mind the best place this realm can offer them. One has proved herself a superb archer._ Not keen for tournaments, he refrained from elaborating on the manner of that proof. _Arya and two of their friends from home wish to travel with them._ He was certain Maege knew the name of his third trueborn and second daughter.

 

            He confirmed her positive reply as soon as he cracked the scroll and could find the people involved. “Time for another adventure,” the archer told the flower.


	15. Daenerys II

            So one of Rhaegar’s children still lived instead of being murdered by the Usurper’s dogs. Ironically, he had been saved by another one of the false king’s men. Daenerys realized she was bound by blood to Jon Snow as closely as Ned Stark was, an aunt in the father’s House instead of an uncle in that of the mother.

 

Daenerys was right about Jon’s Stark appearance. Yet she was reminded that a person’s experiences shaped them as well as their blood. Though he’d been called Snow until recently, Ned had raised Jon as a Stark, his son, and thus Robb’s brother.

 

            Bookish men would make much of the wonders lately. She and Viserys had never had a maester, being on the run from the Usurper’s agents instead of stably ensconced in a particular castle. Viserys had taught her what he could of their history. Her brother had been all she had left, even for all the times she woke the dragon, even considering handing her to Drogo without a care for what she thought of it

 

Ser Willem Darry had escorted her and Viserys to safety in the aftermath of the War of the Usurper. His time with them in Braavos before he took sick and died was the closest thing she had known to stability in her four-and-ten years. The memories of the house’s red door and the lemon tree outside her bedroom window burned ever brightly in her still.

 

His brother Jonothor had been slaughtered along with Rhaegar at the Trident. Three of Jonothor’s sworn brothers had stood vigil at the place Rhaegar and Lyanna eloped to. Gerold Hightower and Arthur Dayne had been two of the greatest knights in the realm, Oswell Whent at least worthy to stand amongst them. Viserys’ righteous anger echoed in her head. _Barristan Selmy had been worthy, until he went on to serve the Usurper. The Kingslayer had kept his white cloak after murdering my father. That was what the Kingsguard had devolved to under Robert_.

 

Hightower, Dayne and Whent had been killed by Robert’s men, looking to kidnap Lyanna and deliver her back to the man she had run away from when Rhaegar presented much better prospects. Given both Panem artifice and Westerosi history, it now seemed obvious that Lyanna had died in childbed with Jon, like Daenerys’ own mother Rhaella had with her.

 

Jon was a common name throughout Westeros and its history. Ned Stark like as not got it from fellow rebel lord Jon Arryn, who he and the Usurper had fostered with until right before the War of the Usurper broke out.

 

She admired Lyanna’s spirit as shown in rejecting Robert; mayhaps Daenerys and her goodsister would have become fast friends had they lived at court with Targaryens maintaining their rightful place upon the Iron Throne.

Daenerys realized that either of Rhaegar’s sons would have been more of an age to marry her than Viserys. Targaryens did sometimes marry outside the house, but she doubted she would have been married to Drogo in a world without the Usurper or one in which he lay defeated.

Whatever fate might have wrought, she had wed Drogo and would take no other men. The handmaidens who became somewhat like friends and sisters were actually here with her.

 

Justice was harsh here. Floggings and execution were a regular occurrence. To see the smallfolk treated like disobedient slaves sickened her. There were many things district folk had to fear, but at least rapers weren’t much of a concern; a particular multiple offender had just been hanged. Here, the scum were generally caught and punished instead of hailed as conquerors, the victim’s cunt reduced to some low-down man’s prize. She was reminded of the Dothraki having a rather different opinion on the matter.

 

Yet Mayor Blade could be a warm man when not seeing to the carrying out of cold punishments. Apparently he was going to be a grandfather. His son had gotten Doreah with child. _It was wholly unsurprising the way he’d been bedding her since she got here_ , Daenerys thought. _Mayhaps he planted it in her that first time he whisked her away to his bedchamber._

 

            Harvest the second was considered obnoxious by local girls. Mayhaps they resented the power his lord father represented. For Doreah’s part, Daenerys wondered if he seemed better than he was compared to the dregs of Essos, that the boy seemed appealingly aggressive instead of too much so. At least this boy knew how lucky he was, and Doreah knew he knew. Daenerys knew that Doreah could stoke lust rather than merely satiate it.

 

            Daenerys was the first she’d told, she who’d seen those signs only a few moons’ turns ago herself. She quickly spread the word. “Zhey Irri! Zhey Jhiqui! Doreah mesie.” _Irri! Jhiqui! Doreah is pregnant._

           

            They were resolved to use the Dothraki language amongst themselves. It did symbolize the people who spoke it. Daenerys would not forget her husband’s society, the one she had lived amongst for a few months, and she was resolved that Rhaego would learn of his father’s people. Irri and Jhiqui would naturally communicate better in their native tongue.

 

            The people here only spoke Common, which would make it particularly hard for them to decipher Dothraki. Daenerys had grown up hearing High Valyrian and the various bastardizations of it in the Free Cities. This experience had helped her grasp Dothraki even though the language of her husband’s people was quite different. The four girls decided this was useful for when they didn’t want to be understood.

 

            “Hash Doreah akemoe haji Harvest?” Jhiqui wondered. _Will she marry him?_

“Kash mori ray hezhahi zhindatthi asskehqoy, ishish,” Daenerys suggested. _Mayhaps when they’ve had six-and-ten namedays._

 

It was common for young couples to wait at least until right after their last Reaping so there was no chance of one of them dying in a Hunger Games. That’s what his parents had done. His mother Orchard had not been chosen for the 54th Games; his slightly older father had last been at risk for the 52nd.

 _Harvest the second, the only child of their body, had not been born until a few years later_ , Daenerys remembered hearing about their family. _Gods knew Irri and Jhiqui could dress me beautifully, and I suppose they would do the same for our other friend if that day comes_ , Daenerys thought to herself.

If the young man had gotten the young woman with child, they might not even wait until then. Panem had an absolute minimum marriageable age of six-and-ten for both women and men, only for those about the same age, as Doreah and Harvest were. It was eight-and-ten otherwise. That all seemed one of the better parts of Panem’s laws.

 

Daenerys and her handmaidens were fast becoming somewhat like daughters to Orchard. It seemed she had felt unlucky to get only sons. Some men with only daughters held similar thoughts. _Mayhaps with more malice,_ muttered the monarch’s mate.

 

 _Well, Orchard wasn’t the only lucky one,_ Daenerys thought. She and her handmaidens were all orphans. They did not talk about how their parents had died. Mayhaps they did not know, or did not care to discuss it even with her. She knew Irri and Jhiqui had been taken from a rival khalasar; their parents could have been killed by Drogo’s horde. Perhaps they didn’t dwell on this out of love for the khaleesi.

 

            The three young women had comforted her in this strange new world that did not have people such as Drogo in it. Seeing how accepted romance between two women was here, they were rather more forthright in how they went about doing so. Irri lingered in her bedchamber tonight. Her kisses tasted of far more than duty this evening. “Yer zheana akka. Me nem nesa,” Daenerys reassured her as she pulled her lips away. _You are beautiful too. It is known._

            Irri stood up. “Hash odaya allayafi, Khaleesi?” she said as she pulled away her gown. _You like my breasts, Khaleesi?_

            “Yes,” Daenerys found herself barely able to say. They were of a size with her own, small and taut, the same coppery color as the rest of Irri’s skin.

            Irri sent her smallclothes to the floor along with her dress. “Kis sajas jin,” she added. _Try mounting this._ The way she laid down on the bed and displayed another patch of her black hair made clear just how badly she wanted to be ridden.

            In the rapidly budding passion of this moment, Daenerys had just as little trouble removing her own clothes. “Vosma darif yeroon diwee,” Daenerys said, objecting that Irri’s _saddle_ was wet. _I’ll just have to be real careful to hold on_ , Daenerys thought to herself. There was no pain, only pleasure, as they rubbed their bodies against each other. “Allayafa saccheychiori yeroon anna alikh,” Daenerys said as she pressed her hips against Irri’s another time, continuing her answer to her handmaiden’s question. _I like your cunt more._

 

The seven usually ate together in the house’s feast hall, at a majestic table of reddish-brown wood. The evening after Daenerys and Irri’s first sexual adventure together was no exception. The group ate thin crisp breads filled with shredded beef and cheese. _Spiced as if their cook was a Dornishman!_ Daenerys thought as she refilled her flagon of water yet again.

 

“We have money, but you’ll be doing the work to take care of your own kid, got it?” Harvest said to Harvest. Right now he was a father speaking with love rather than a lord speaking with vengeance, but he was intimidating nonetheless. “I must say that Dorry has been a good influence on you, and the odds were in our favor when the four of you showed up.”


	16. Katniss V

            The journey north to Bear Island was not so eventful as their time in King’s Landing, but the travel of Katniss, Peeta, Rue, Thresh, Clove and Arya was hardly without its dramatic occurrences.

 

            A few days’ ride north from King’s Landing, they heard a harrowing scream. “Raper!” a high-pitched voice trilled. It was off in the distance somewhat, but while three of the six travelers had grown up poor, none of them were of poor eyesight. Sight confirmed sound, a burly figure dragging a girl away. His brutal smack was clear even from afar. They felt they had to do something, especially since it seemed no one else was on the road with them.

 

            Arya retrieved her Needle from its pincushion on the inside of her left saddlebag. Thresh also had a blade, a nasty-looking thing from the Cornucopia, but it was not so easily accessible. Katniss’ bow and arrows were also packed away. The two of them dismounted to rummage through their luggage. At least such important cargo wasn’t back with the pack horses.

 

            Clove had other ideas, and also smaller weapons, at least one of her knives within hands’ reach at all times. She kicked the horse’s side and it surged forward while the others ambled forth after being remounted. Even Clove hadn’t wanted to take a shot at their initial range, mayhaps concerned about hitting the victim rather than the perpetrator.

 

            Yet she gladly threw when she felt she had a good chance. It looked like it hit the thug in the arm he wasn’t using to drag the girl, and he stopped pulling her so hard. Clove pumped the first that had released the blade. “Back where I’m from, the fuckers get hanged for doing that more than once.” _So that was Two. Twelve’s peacekeepers generally did get off their stools in the Hob for things that actually should be illegal. Except when Cray himself was doing it to girls who were too young even if they seemingly wanted to._ Katniss wouldn’t have been surprised if Clove’s target had done it before and would’ve done it again.

 

            “If he isn’t dead, he will be,” Thresh muttered as he steered his own horse forward. He did have a way of being angry about the right things. It was pleasantly surprising how cheerful he could be otherwise. She’d seen that from him before when he’d shown no interest in participating in the Capitol’s spectacle.

 

            Clove, though. Use of force was necessary here if it ever was, but Katniss feared Clove would’ve been just as overly enthusiastic about killing an innocent tribute like Rue.

 

 _Or Prim! What in the seven hells is happening to my people back home?_ Katniss noticed the way she had phrased her thoughts, already talking like she lived here in Westeros after only a few months. In some ways she wanted to keep growing closer to Rue as a reminder of Prim, in some ways she wanted to avoid the darling little girl for that reason.

 

Direwolves had given them some idea of what was happening in the other world - although it wasn’t much information, it was better than anything else they had. The magnificent doglike beasts had a unique mental connection with each other which could be sensed by the humans they were bonded with. The Stark siblings kept wolves that were themselves siblings. Arya and Nymeria, along with Sansa and Lady, had said before that they’d felt no harm to Robb and Grey Wind, Jon and Ghost.

 

Back in the here and now, they had a victim to approach, or was that near-victim? At the sound of clomping hooves, Clove’s braids swaying with the motion of the horse, the young woman she’d saved called out. “Ah, so my gallant knight be a lady!”

“I’m a girl, yes, but I’m not sure if I’m a lady,” Clove responded, and the woman she’d saved began to laugh a little bit through her tears. It was obvious why she was crying – what had happened to her, relief at what didn’t happen, and the physical pain of a nasty facial injury.

 

“Ah, you’re them foreigners the Hand found,” she realized, evidently having been in King’s Landing but leaving before Katniss’ group had. Clove nodded, but neglected to specify that she was from a place where that vile act was taken rather more seriously. _And what was considered a vile act here? A couple mostly harmless gay knights? This place’s laws didn’t make sense to her either_ , Katniss ranted to herself.

 

“Gotta fix up your face,” Katniss observed. “My sister and mother are the healers in the family, but your physical wound seems simple enough.” _Left unsaid was doubt about her mental state._ Katniss had found a fancy Capitol bottle amongst the Cornucopia supplies. That currently had plenty of clean water in it; the group could boil and chill more later. They also had soap for the young woman’s blood and grime. Peeta offered more than enough money to more than replace the market goods she’d lost in the process of being dragged away. It seemed a good idea not to dwell on this day by making more of a ritual of the rescue.

 

Prim or their mother might’ve been better at treating her. The suffering of the Seam didn’t overwhelm them, so Katniss doubted the wounds of Westeros would either.

She adored her Buttercup. Katniss still thought the Everdeens couldn’t afford even a little cat, and only quite grudgingly had tolerated him even for Prim’s sake. She wondered what her sister would think of the massive Stark beasts. Maybe Little Duck did know that, if Grey Wind and Ghost had appeared in District Twelve.

 

Only Stark blood could control the direwolves; that was clear enough from what the Panem exiles had already seen here. Prim loved everyone and everything; Katniss was afraid of how that would hurt her.

 

            Yet love didn’t seem so bad as she was sitting next to Peeta around their campfire a few evenings later. She was warm from more than the flames, as one of his big strong protective arms was draped over her.

 

            “You never forget your first,” Clove said boisterously.

            Thresh got the joke but did not find it amusing. “Where’d you learn that from? Enobaria? Tearing some kid’s throat out with her bare teeth?” Katniss had also been quite young then, but old enough to know of that brutal incident from the 62nd Games.

It was clear Clove admired its perpetrator, not only as a predecessor but also because Career district victors played a primary role in training future ones. “That’s actually how her Games ended, not started,” Clove shot back.

 

            Peeta sensed a need to change the subject. “Arya?” he said while looking across the circle to aid in getting the girl’s attention. This one of Ned’s daughters had wild dark hair, yet a sweet innocent face. “How’d you come up with her name?” he added while glancing at the dark gray direwolf.

            “Nymeria was a great warrior queen,” she began, her voice already full of enthusiasm. “She led the Rhoynar people across the sea to Dorne, the southeast peninsula of Westeros. They were mostly women, after many Rhoynar men fell against an invasion of their homeland. The Rhoynar won this war. Hundreds of years later, her descendants are still to that part of Westeros what the Starks are to the North.” Westeros was rich in history; there were legends from over ten thousand years ago. The world now occupied by Panem likely had such a past, but the Capitol only went as far back as what they did 74 years ago.

 

            “The girls win our yearly melee nearly as often as the boys…” Clove began to explain. Death melee, but Katniss supposed equally victimized by the Capitol was still equal; the divisions they used were more between the poor and not quite so poor of the districts.

“As of last year, 36 girls to 37 boys,” Clove continued proudly. “The last six are are all girls. I would have made it seven in a row, of course,” she laughed. The other tributes didn’t find that so amusing, but Arya was enthralled.

            “Three years ago, the Victor was Sapphire Silversmith, the young woman from the same town as Glimmer…” It seemed Clove had purposely not mentioned Marvel – she didn’t much care for him either. He was still in King’s Landing, waiting for a group of less willing Night’s Watch recruits before leaving for the Wall, men who found that more appealing than dungeons or chopping blocks. Mayhaps they had already left, but Katniss’ group would still remain far ahead of them.

            “She’s even bigger and stronger than Thresh here,” Clove said, Arya’s eyes going wide. “And she’s brilliant with a sword. Needle fits you well, but she wields a full size blade. Well, one of her lovers in the Capitol is heir to a very large blacksmith shop. He gave her a fine blade with a blazing pink handle. She called it Amazon, after a society of woman warriors in our history. Six moons’ turns after winning, each Victor travels through the realm in celebration.” Katniss’ mind corrected Clove’s mouth. _The Capitol rubs it in._ “Sapphire was already carrying Amazon by then.”

 

So Clove had recalled a surprisingly similar story about the origin of a name. However, for Arya she’d told it as a tale of fighting women, and Katniss appreciated how Arya appreciated that. “Katniss, the way you and Clove are getting along instead of trying to kill each other is a great example of just how artificial and destructive the arena and the Games are,” Peeta said. _Since when did he start sounding like Gale?_ Katniss thought. This brought back more memories of home, yet the thoughts of him were as futile as worry for Prim.

 

“There are a few women like that in the town I’m from,” Clove said.

“But you have knives,” Arya pointed out, not letting Clove get a word in edgewise.

“Well, except for the choice of weapons. And some of them aren’t so noticeable as Sapphire. The one from two-and-thirty years ago, many of the older ones really, we don’t hear much about anymore,” Clove went on.

Arya recalled something from their time in King’s Landing. “Prince Renly said something about a woman in his part of the realm who’s real big and strong. I don’t know what she fights with, though.”

 

            It was a warm night here in the riverlands along the kingsroad. It likely would be colder in Panem, especially so in the Seam. _Or the worst parts of District Eleven_ , Rue and Thresh had added. Peeta admitted that the heat from the ovens was useful this time of year. Well, it was still summer in Westeros.

 

            Katniss must’ve dozed off that evening, waking up leaned against Peeta’ rock-hard chest. “It looks like an angel landed on me tonight,” he said as she stirred. “Look, here’s her halo,” he added, running a hand through the hair that she often did not leave in a braid lately. He had an incredible depth of sentiment for her and displayed it earnestly, often this sweetly. That sort of thing gave her quite a desire to kiss him, a desire that he’d wished to return for longer than she’d had it. The warm embrace of his lips tonight was no exception.

 

            “He’s like a gallant knight out of one of Sansa’s stories,” Arya said. Katniss wasn’t sure whether she meant it as a compliment, knowing what she knew of those two sisters, but Peeta was glad to consider it praise.

           

            “Of course, my parents are very happy together, but I don’t care to think of them _that_ way,” Arya added.

            “Hear hear!” Clove seconded, and this was actually something on which Rue agreed with her.

            “Hers were. Gods, they were,” Peeta said while looking at Katniss wistfully. “I hope to be as happy with her,” he let out. “It’s certainly not something I saw in my family’s halls!”

            “Yes, I know of his mother as a colossal witch,” Katniss agreed.

            “And my father lets her be one,” Peeta raged, certainly capable of well-placed anger.

            Thresh also had that ability. “My father was a wonderful man, or so my grandmother, his mother, tells me. Yet he’s dead now, because our local lords pay no heed to the safety of the smallfolk’s work equipment.” _No wonder Thresh had such an understanding of my situation_ , Katniss realized. Also, it was important for Arya to understand how smallfolk lived _or didn’t_ , even with having a lord father as fair as Eddard Stark. _He seemed to be one of the few rich people who deserved ‘noble’ as a term of praise_ , Katniss thought.

 

“My brothers can spend nights with rich girls and that’s fine, but I’m madly in love with a poor girl and my mother just can’t stand that!” Peeta told Katniss later. “What’s worse to her is that you’re the daughter of a woman who dared to love a poor man. She sees me as repeating her mistake. I can’t possibly see what’s wrong about such passion for such a wonderful person.” She leaned closer and saw tears which she could and did wipe out of Peeta’s eyes. _Had anyone else ever soothed him? And yet he’s still as sweet as he can be!_ Katniss thought.

 

They felt no need to kiss so chastely when away from even their small crowd. This time, Peeta’s tongue escaped his lips to lick hers, and Katniss’ instinct wanted nothing more than to open her mouth further. As a hunter, she _did_ know how to rely on instinct. She would have smiled if Peeta didn’t have a better idea for her mouth. It looked like the boy with the bread wanted nothing more than to make the Girl on Fire burn ever more brightly.

“You look happy,” Katniss observed as she licked Peeta’s lips one last time for now.

“Of course I am. I just got deep kissed by the most beautiful woman in my world,” he replied. Not only was she susceptible to the pull of love after all, she kept on realizing how much the feeling added to her life. This did give her a better understanding of what her mother had done.

 

A few minutes later, she found him hunched over in another part of their latest makeshift campsite. One of his hands was moving and he was breathing heavily. “Katniss!” he said, shocked. She was shocked too, as she walked around him to see his member out of his breeches. Another incredibly warm feeling overtook her, the kind of hunger he fueled rather than satiated. “To have your body so close to mine is even more arousing than I ever dreamed,” he said breathlessly.

 

By the time she approached him, he had already almost found his release. She had been curious about the feel of his cock underneath her fingers, but it has sprayed white as soon as she reached for it. She would remain a maid that night. She still wasn’t ready for that deep a connection. She was afraid of the act, even knowing how gentle Peeta Mellark was.

 

Ever the baker, Peeta arose early the next morning to start the day’s cooking, though for now he served six people instead of a few hundred. Yet before he began work on the meal, he greeted his beloved. He leaned in close to brush the hair out of her eyes. Still barely stirring, she said “Do I get to eat you up this morning?”

He interpreted ‘groggily’ as ‘dreamily’ and replied, “Katniss, when you were aroused at me being hard for you last night, that was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen”. Her cheeks answered for her, and Peeta added “Looks like the girl has really caught fire,” to which Katniss agreed with a nod. “So I’ve got a better idea for right now. I _knead_ you,” he said with a wink.

 

He wrapped both of them under her blanket. Few things had ever felt as good to Katniss as did Peeta’s hands on her waist right now. The sensation only got better as he massaged her hips then worked his way up under the hem of her shirt, tracing her sides. Looking at his breeches, the ‘dough’ of her skin wasn’t the only thing he was making hard.

His strong fingers discovered the cups of her bra, squeezing her breasts through them. She decided that she wanted his staff of life in her hands right now. He let out a low moan of “Katnisssss!” as her hands found the throbbing blood vessels of his member.

“Peetaa…” she responded to the attention now being paid directly to her nipples.

“Your beautiful bronzed breasts deserve it,” Peeta whispered back. “Now try sliding your hand up and down me.” She knew nothing about these things, so Peeta’s ideas seemed better than hers. As she rubbed his cock, her hands kept bumping into his waistband, until she saw him throw his head back and felt his cock spasm in her hand. Apparently the white stuff was sticky.

“I liked that more than I ever dreamed I would,” Katniss said breathlessly. “I never felt so beautiful before.” _Not even in Cinna’s costumes,_ Katniss added to herself, _but apparently we’ve already decided to not dwell on having been shown off for the Capitol’s amusement._

“I’ve had plenty of time to think about how to please you,” Peeta explained, “helping you discover how beautiful you already were. My brothers only talk about how they fuck girls, but that still gave me ideas on how to make love to this woman.”

 

            At this rate, mayhaps he would have her maidenhead in the morning instead of the night. She knew she wouldn’t lose anything to him, rather gain another wonderful feeling from his love for her.

 

She lived in a particularly odd world right now – not inured to Westeros’ restrictive sexual standards, yet not knowing much about the Panem customs, since she had never had cause to learn them. She had even purposely ignored those feelings, probably including having cared for Peeta after he became the boy with the bread. Katniss caught herself. _Also probably including just how close I grew to Gale. Yet it’s hard to think of that with Peeta’s seed on my fingers._

 

Not this time. Rue was awake and walking around, likely wondering what was for breakfast. She found that a marked improvement over wondering whether there’d be any breakfast at all.

 

The meal was a flatbread easy to bake out in the open at least for him, with bacon they had purchased in the last market town. _We had trouble finding chicken_ , Katniss remembered. Peeta said he’d looked for that since it was one of the things that passed for fancy meat in the Merchant Section. There wasn’t much fresh game in such a heavily settled area, and with her newfound wealth Katniss didn’t have to risk poaching. All six enjoyed soaking the bread in bacon grease.

 

Rue had mentioned that she’d seen Katniss and Peeta together, and Clove came to the obvious conclusion. “Apparently somebody likes men very much after all.”

“This man, yes,” Katniss clarified. The smile Peeta gave her was so obviously over the top, but neither of the two cared.

“Maybe you’re Peetasexual. I’ve long since joked that I’m Catosexual,” Clove muttered.

“So you think Glimmer has excellent taste?” Peeta said in attempt to defuse jealousy.

“I suppose,” it worked.

“But Katniss tastes better than any other,” Peeta said, going for another kiss.

 

After that meal, Peeta had a less-pleasant private conversation in mind. “My father once said he loved your mother too,” Peeta explained.

“I suppose that isn’t so surprising. She used to be very beautiful,” Katniss agreed.

“So no wonder he’s happy with me loving you,” Peeta added.

“Though I can see that as giving your mother a reason to be jealous,” Katniss cautioned.

“Mayhaps that made it even harder for him to try to say anything about what she did to me,” Peeta agreed.

 

Eventually they worked their way back into the North. There was a dense forest inbetween the seat of the Starks and that of the Mormonts, and the shortest path through it was to the south and west of Winterfell. The plan was to finally leave the kingsroad after stopping at Castle Cerwyn, a half day’s ride south of Winterfell. The castle and the family that held it shared a name, though too much time had passed to be sure which came first.

 

Sometimes their bread went stale. Even Katniss could tell that this was more than an annoyance to Peeta. At first she thought it wounded his professional pride. Yet apparently it brought back bad memories for him. “You’d think that bakers would eat fresh bread, but no, we had the stuff that was too stale to sell. It’s much better than not eating anything, of course, but it still got rather tiresome. At least we can consistently afford milk and eggs to fry it in now.”

“It tastes much better that way,” Katniss agreed after Peeta had placed a piece directly in her mouth. Even a certain girl who never had such concerns, being born into a wealthy family, thought the meal was delicious.

“Well, you can’t eat it so fresh that it’s still dough,” Peeta explained. “Too sticky and chewy, too hard to digest. Fire turns it into something much more edible. Figuring out how to do that must’ve been an even more important invention than the bow and arrow.”

“We can’t much eat raw meat like direwolves can,” Arya added.

“That sounds like much the same idea,” Katniss agreed, “but uncooked meat is rather more likely to make people sick.”

“Too much dough or batter is like that, but a little bit of uncooked sweets is one of the most wonderful things in the world,” Peeta finished.

 

Peeta had japed in front of Arya, Rue, Clove and Thresh, but was quite serious when alone with Katniss. “Of course, my so called mother resented anything I did for a ‘Seam rat’, and especially you, but she also hated that for once you had something she didn’t.”

 

Castle Cerwyn was plenty close enough for a mother to go see her daughter, and for some of the other Starks and staff to follow along. That had also been part of the plans, a good time for conversations ill-suited to raven for whatever reason. Catelyn emerged from one of the wagons and Arya was of course the first to recognize her. “Mother!” Arya greeted.

Mother and daughter went to talk alone after they embraced. Katniss couldn’t help but overhear, but stayed quiet. It could’ve made it worse reminding them there was someone who could listen in. “Have I a new sister or brother? Is that why you are not ahorse?” Arya wondered.

“Yes. I didn’t care to ride the previous five times either. Your father knows; I sent him a raven.” Mayhaps Arya was too young to remember when Catelyn was carrying Bran, but the third Stark like as not would have remembered the fifth, Rickon. Rickon was here with Shaggydog. Summer was with Bran, who remained the Stark in Winterfell. “Your brother has the makings of a fine young lord. He did well hearing the peoples’ pleas with the counsel of myself and Luwin.”

           

            As Lord Cerwyn feasted them, this seemed a good time for involved tales of King’s Landing. “My daughter in an archery tournament?” Catelyn muttered at that piece of news. “I suppose that if you are to shoot, you ought at least do it well,” she grudgingly agreed. “Well, it seems you have made fast friends with someone who knows the art,” Catelyn admitted.

            “And when I am married off, may I have a lover as sweet as hers,” Arya added. “He puts the gentle in gentleman, I suppose,” she japed. “I suppose girls like me require lord husbands who are particularly understanding,” Arya wondered.  
            “Aye, you are half wolf,” Catelyn agreed. “You are but nine, my sweet summer child. And I am certain that your lord father shall see to good matches.”

 

            “Robb is here no longer, but I still have four other children, apparently five others now,” Catelyn said. That gave Katniss some bitter thoughts. Katniss’ own mother would have done well to hear similar words about the loss of a family member. Granted, Catelyn did not have her source of sustenance disappear along with her son. Ingrid lost her income along with her dear husband. The Hawthornes had been as poor as the Everdeens, Hazelle with three and soon four children, although Hazelle hadn’t already lost everything else to marry Thomas the way Ingrid had with Jacob.

 

            It was soon time to leave these halls. Torrhen’s Square was the next castle on their route. It was slightly to the south as well as to the west, but north from there was through plain terrain rather than wild woods. The Tallharts held this castle, but their patriarch was a knight rather than lord. Ser Helman pointed out that his son and heir Benfred was unwed before the group went on their way.

 

The wolfswood, it was called. It was a foreign place to her and the woods outside District Twelve would always be her place, but she still knew her way around a forest.

 

            Deepwood Motte was the keep on the other side of the trees. It too was an imposing structure, but of earth and wood rather than stone. The Glovers which sat there also welcomed their liege lord’s daughter and her newfound friends.

 

One of the Glover men arranged a trip to Bear Island in one of the island men’s fishing boats. That was one reason Bear Island women learned to fight – they had to, when the island was raided while the men were off on fishing trips. _Mayhaps the District Four pair should have come with us,_ Katniss suddenly realized. _Or mayhaps they would have been ill-suited to the cold climate – Four was even further to the south than Eleven._ The Greyjoys and the other people from the Iron Islands were the ones responsible for such raids. The Mormonts, the Glovers, and anyone else on the west coast of Westeros feared the ironborn would only stay quiet for so long.

 

Mormonts themselves were waiting on the opposite shore for the boat to land. “A child of Winterfell is always welcome at Bear Island,” Lady Maege began. _The Starks seemed to have earned the North’s solid loyalty to them, instead of just waving their swords in peoples’ faces._ “Especially one like you. And I trust in your taste in companions.”

“Thank you, Lady Mormont. You ought see her shoot, but you ought also taste his bread, and I’m hungry from all this traveling, so how about that first?”

            “So you’re a baker’s boy? I suppose they would have those everywhere,” Maege said.

            “They do. And while I can churn out bread as well as anyone, I’d much rather work on sweets, especially decorating them,” Peeta answered.

            “Well, you can help prepare you own welcome feast,” Maege suggested and ordered.

 

            “Them tough women remind me of my grandmomma and sister,” Thresh said, “about time I got some reminders of home too.”

 

            As in King’s Landing and elsewhere, Peeta got along well with kitchen staff. The Bear island cooks liked his idea for sweet oatcakes: six parts oats, four parts flour, as much sugar as flour, two parts butter, one part egg and one part raisins. There was a hundred times as much main mixture as spice assortment, that being nearly half salt. The dense dough had to be mixed by hands even with the equipment he had access to back home.

 

            “Oh, yes!” Katniss said of the rich disc, its sweet taste setting even more heavily on a Seam stomach.

            “That’s not the way I really want to make her scream,” Peeta japed. Thresh and many of the other men present found that quite amusing. “And I stand a better chance of that than you bedding Lady Alysane,” Peeta countered.

            “Whatever are you talking about? Yeah, she looks nice and thick in all the right places. Ah, some lady, those kids of hers were fathered by a bear, yeah right,” Thresh said boisterously of the explanation for Maege’s only two grandbabes.

            “It’ll happen, man, it’ll happen,” Peeta said hopefully.

 

            Katniss felt that it was time for something more to happen between her and Peeta. How much she kept desiring him when she once thought she’d never desire anybody seemed proof of that. She knew he would almost certainly be _up_ for it whenever she was ready. She picked out a dress – even simple ones were fancy to her – and no smallclothes.

 

            “What do you want?” he said through the door of his new bedchamber.

            “You,” Katniss whispered as she opened the door and walked in.

            “You in a dress? Must be a special occasion!” he said, smiling, once she closed the door behind her.  
            “The occasion will be more special once I get out of it,” she said to make herself clear. “You’re always reminding me how I’m such a beautiful woman. Well, now’s the time to make me feel like a woman.” At this point she pushed the shoulder straps away and the dress fluttered to the floor. She had gladly made Peeta more and more familiar with her body these past few weeks, but this was the first time she had ever been totally nude in from of him. He was all the more in awe because it was such a pleasant surprise. “Let’s go all the way tonight, no regrets, just love.”

 

She didn’t have to tell him twice. Several years’ tender fantasy quickly began pouring out of Peeta. He stripped as quickly as he could, leaving the clothes in a pile by the bedside. This way, he could press his entire body against her as he wrapped his mighty arms around her waist. She knew she was safe in his embrace. His tongue touched hers once more as he carried her to the bed and gently laid her down on it. He broke the passionate lip-lock and began laying a trail of kisses downwards. She arched and began to squirm when her nipples stiffened at his tongue’s touch.

 

Yet this was nothing compared to the delirious joy her body moved with after his hands massaged the hair around her cunt and his kisses reached her lower lips. While he had never gone beyond the fence, he sure knew how to travel through this bush. “Peeta! Peeta!” she cried.

 

He took this as the cue to finally enter her. He pushed slowly and soon could feel her maidenhead breaking against his gentle pressure. She had feared it would hurt even with him, but whatever pain there was ended up overwhelmed by the pleasure. Evidently _it_ was very much supposed to go _there_. Besides, she figured her cunt being so slippery helped him slide in and out of it. It did tend to get that way when he was showing his passion for her, but tonight was even more so.

 

He ended up on edge from the minutes of gentle stroking, yet when he was about to burst, he slid out and spilled his seed onto her belly. Even in the heat of the moment, and what heat and what a moment it must be for him too, he still remembered that she was nowhere near ready to be with child. Yet she would soon be ready for Peeta to make love to her like this again.


	17. Daenerys III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve been working on a fic that I’m going to post all at once this summer. I admit that makes me look even less active than usual.
> 
> While working on this Daenerys chapter, I revised the last one (Chapter 15 Daenerys II). I expanded the description of their relationship with Orchard (Mayor Harvest’s wife), and discussed Daenerys and the handmaidens as orphans. There were also some typo fixes and rewordings, but I often do that without mentioning it.

            Life in District Eleven both pleased and disgusted Daenerys. She had a place, a family, a whole family. Yet while none of her new relatives were as openly psychotic as Viserys had been, they were at best indifferent to the suffering around them. At worst, they played a part in it.

 

            This time, the House Blade cook prepared pork ribs slathered in thick brown sauce. Gods, the food tasted good, and even Irri and Jhiqui were glad to eat meat of a non-horse variety. Yet outside they saw human ribs showing through sallowed brown skin.

 

            Supposedly the residents of the districts were free people, but they may as well be slaves. This continued to burn at Daenerys, a fire that had been lit soon after she got here, a blaze she kindled very privately. Lying made it worse, somehow. “At least the masters in Essos was honest, terrible painful honest, that we were slaves,” Doreah said, glancing to Irri and Jhiqui.

“Here they say they’re government and citizen,” Daenerys added. “This lie seems to help preserve the reality of master and slave. They have the lash and use it frequently, but also crueler tortures. Their better devices do not seem to make them better men. They do not seem to see the targets of their abuse as other men. We know how they treat people they care about.”

 

            Daenerys had long since decided that her own son would be named Rhaego, after both his father and his late uncle. Doreah hadn’t been sure until recently. “If it be a boy, there’s a tradition to continue, Harvest the third of his name. If a girl, Daenerys Blade,” she said with a flourish.”

            “I thought you might, Dorry,” the honored namesake answered.

 

Daenerys wondered about a different choice of name part of a generation prior. Mayhaps Jon would have been named Jaehaerys had he been acknowledged as a Targaryen, but there was no particular reason Rhaegar would have thought of the same initial as Ned did.

 

            Even the devices that were simple to Panem often seemed wondrous to Daenerys and the other outsiders. Yet to have such things and deny them to the smallfolk was cruelty, though it was better the nobility had them instead of nobody.

 

The medical care they received seemed superb even on mundane things, let alone what would be available for far more involved issues; childbirth obviously came to mind.

 

There was a flurry of activity in the halls of House Blade in preparation for the babes being brought forth. Daenerys knew a prince rode in her womb. _After a king rode in my cunt_ , she japed to herself. There was more truth than she had first thought in the simple ribald response. Drogo had certainly ridden her, for the Dothraki fashion was to take a woman like a stallion takes a mare.

 

Doreah suspected she carried a son as well and waited for Panem science to confirm this. The time at which such devices were effective was a moon’s turn or two away for her.

 

Daughter or son, there were medicines for the mother-to-be to help ensure a healthy babe. Daenerys and Doreah were both offered bottles that read _Field Baby Products Pregnancy Vitamins._ The cap twisted off, perfectly matched with the neck of the bottle, cast from a mold but not metal. The tablets within were not odious to consume. This ‘Field’ merchant was a successful one; Daenerys and Doreah had seen her or his name seen on many products intended for babes and their mothers.

 

 _Mesik_ (pregnant woman) or not, the people here seemed to have much better teeth. There were nearly painless ways to remove or patch the damaged ones, something that in Essos entailed much screaming if done at all. There were ways to avoid even that. Besides a compound for scrubbing teeth, they had a liquid to swill around the mouth to rinse away remaining food. That stung like strong wine, apparently the same idea as using strong drink to clean out a wound. It also improved one’s breath. “Much fresher than the smell of Harv’s cock,” Irri had japed at Doreah.

 

Doreah was full of ideas as to how Daenerys and Irri could please each other. Some of these were also ideas on how she herself wanted to be treated in the bedchamber, so Harvest II was in the corner of Doreah’s room with the two of them. This lesson he would definitely pay attention to. He had been told to shut up and just watch. He actually did so. After all, Doreah was one of the few people besides his father than he listened to.

 

            For once Doreah was helping Daenerys _un_ dress. “Feels real good to have a mouth on your cunt, especially if the person whose mouth it is knows what they’re doing with it. Like if they graze the bulb at the top,” she explained. She wanted to demonstrate, and of course had to stop talking in order to do so - now it was Daenerys’ turn to make noise, and oh gods, did she ever. What Irri had done to Daenerys’ cunt was fiery enough, and she was an amateur. Doreah was a professional, and it showed.

 

            Daenerys shakily stood. She thought that reteaching this to Irri would be a very enjoyable lesson for both of them. Even after being so well bedded by one of her handmaidens, she had no trouble making it to the bedchamber of one of the others.

 

            “It is the khaleesi’s wish that you show her your beautiful body,” Daenerys jokingly ordered Irri. Irri didn’t simply obey. The haidmaiden stripped very enthusiastically, which helped make it clearer that she very much wanted to be naked for the khaleesi.

 

            Daenerys knelt before her, taking in the very womanly smell. Her own juices likely flowed just as freely, and Irri would find that out for herself soon enough. Irri protested. “But I am here to pleasure you. You are not here to pleasure me.”

            “It would satisfy me to satisfy you,” Daenerys explained. Irri leaned back smiling. _Soon she would be doing more than just smiling_ , Daenerys thought mischievously. As Irri moved backwards, her silky black hair swished just a bit, and her pert breasts jiggled ever so slightly. Irri’s subtle erotic gesture made Daenerys want her even more, leading her to dive in even more quickly than she’d intended. Irri’s reaction to Daenerys was just as positive as Daenerys’ to Doreah.

 

            This lesson was much more enjoyable to demonstrate than most, from Doreah to Daenerys and then to Irri, and now from Irri back to Daenerys. Daenerys leaned back, put her legs aside and thrust her cunt out to better receive the lady’s kiss upon it. Irri had apparently started to learn quickly, very very much to her khaleesi’s satisfaction, but then they realized that when you kiss someone, normally they are kissing you as well. Daenerys climbed on top of Irri and then turned around so they didn’t have to take turns.

 

            It had taken Drogo to make the babe that swelled her belly, but Daenerys kept on thinking that she could get more than used to Irri’s touch, not to mention touching Irri herself.


	18. Gale I

January 1st 75 ADD proved to Gale Hawthorne that he had survived another year, in a place where that was very much a concern. The last year had been much more eventful than most.

 

Gale figured his life was going about as well as he could expect for his best friend disappearing from this hellhole that was District Twelve. Although he’d lost her, she wasn’t really gone, hand had been saved from a very likely death. Gale _had_ made some new friends, but for him, no one could quite fill the space Katniss had left, especially not another boy.

 

Robb Stark and Jon Stark-Targaryen did make for fine hunting partners, though. Mayhaps that had come from being able to practice legally in their past life. And what a life! To do that because you wanted to, not because you had to. Gale expected that if they ever returned to the land of their birth they would be quite merciful to poachers, having seen what drove men to that.

 

Furthermore, they had been trained to fight men, so animals were not so much of a challenge for them. Mayhaps Peacekeepers could shoot their own food if their rations weren’t another thing extracted from District labor.

 

Samwell Tarly was not suited to such activities, which his father had been quite cruel about. It seemed painfully ironic to send such a boy to a military unit to be rid of him. Tall said that Randyll wasn’t much better to traditional girls, including their two other sisters.

 

            The oath Jon and Sam took included a vow to not take wives or father children. It technically said nothing about bedding women, assuming nothing came of it. Yet they didn’t wish to take that chance and to them it seemed to violate the spirit of the words. Robb simply didn’t care to, mayhaps waiting until after he found his lady wife. However, Gale was starting to more than cover for them amongst the wenches of District Twelve.

 

            Gale had no reservations, though it had taken a few moons’ turns for him to lose them. Katniss was gone. Even if she came back, Peeta would have had plenty of time to charm her. Gale figured he might as well return to his old ways, though a version for men grown instead of ribald boys.

 

            It would be a decade before he’d feel the impulse to keep boys away from his sister Posy. _Boys like himself?_ he wondered in a tone of confession. Sam seemed similarly worried for Talla in a few years’ time.

 

Gale wished that Katniss had been as forward as the District Twelve women practically lining up for him lately. Overall, the level of attention made him feel good even before he made contact with bodies that passed for healthy by District Twelve standards. Some were a bit older than he was. Apparently they didn’t need to be around his age to realize how handsome he was. To hear his friends tell it, usually the man was older, mayhaps much older, but the opposite was hardly unheard of.

 

            _Well, if Katniss had been like this, she wouldn’t have been the Katniss I knew_ , Gale realized. He understood how someone struggling to survive in the Seam could find romantic entanglements impractical. With her in particular, she’d seen the pain of love in what happened to her mother.

 

            He wasn’t thinking about Katniss as much lately, especially not at times like these. Robin Castle was determined to make even more of a man out of Gale Hawthorne, and he sure didn’t mind, aching to feel the inside of her cunt as well as the outside of the rest of her body.

 

            He had his tongue buried in the Townie’s mouth and his hands rubbing her arse through the fabric of her dress, even hotter and heavier than he’d gotten with her before. She’d thrown her legs around his; he was beyond glad to hold the weight. She was pressing her crotch up against his, causing his cock to grow even stiffer, the bulge in his breeches even more pronounced.

 

He set her down and reached for the hem of her dress. “Yes…please…” she said raggedly in encouragement for him to lift it up. She liked that he liked what he saw – her cunt nearly visible under tight and tiny smallclothes. He pulled them down, leaving the fabric holding her legs together.

 

He tossed his own shorts completely to the floor. She was seemingly even less able to breathe with him naked than when he was starting to get her naked. “Wow, you’re big,” she said. She would know. Gale cared not what men and boys had her before, since he had her now. Hells, she’d know what she was doing. Gale hoped he wasn’t expected to know too much. This was all a marked difference from his friends’ culture.

 

Once he laid her down on the bed and shoved it in her, she found herself plenty able to breathe. It took a lot of air to make those moans and screams. That and the way her softness gripped his hardness drove him wild, which he expressed by ravaging her at an even faster pace. He soon felt his balls tighten up and said “can’t much get you with child, have to shoot it somewhere else” as he slid out.

“Fine by me, I love the taste,” she said as she puckered her lips. He crawled further up the bed to put his member in her mouth, and her throat took his seed as eagerly as her cunt would have, only a bit of it dripping out her lips and down her cheeks. “Mmm, you’re exactly who I wanted for my birthday,” she said as soon as she was able to speak again. _I figured the Castle twins were born only a few weeks before me. This sure makes it clear - I’ll definitely remember January 19 th_, Gale told himself.

 

In this moment, he wanted nothing besides more of this new passion. Her sister was eager to provide that, having recently arrived at their shared bedchamber. Raven Castle was hardly a maiden either, but very pleased with this maiden’s fantasy before her, and soon lost most of her clothes to begin caressing herself.

 

When the twins made eye contact, even as practiced a wench as Raven blushed, the redness on her face blending in with her delightful freckles. “We were always taught to share,” she said to her slightly younger and taller sister lying satiated on the bed.

“I don’t think that’s what your teachers had in mind,” Gale japed, “but there’s plenty of me to go around, especially for such beguiling wenches as the two of you.”

 

Raven started with her mouth instead of finishing with it, causing Gale to get harder again much much quicker than when he stroked himself. He held onto what little he could of Raven’s short blond hair. Her arse was also smaller than her sister’s, but Gale’s hands still found plenty of room to roam as Raven climbed on top of him. His second batch of seed tonight found Raven’s teats.

 

He thought that being expected to handle both of the young women was a _good_ problem to have, unlike so many of the challenges of his life.


	19. Robb IV

            Months of living amongst the smallfolk seemed near as much a journey to Robb as the distance from Winterfell to District Twelve, however many gods-damned leagues that was, however in the seven hells he and the rest had traversed that void.

 

            Jeyne Poole and Talla Tarly had learning sewing as an art and craft, like many highborn girls. Here they were doing admirably with the work as a practical matter of clothing maintenance. Sam had something of the skill himself, much like how Arya didn’t. Sam carried one of his mother’s thimbles.

 

            Some laundry came to Gale’s mother damaged. Some she damaged despite taking the utmost care; mayhaps there were some pieces she needed to handle roughly to clean them. So Hazelle was a literal washerwoman; Panem had other polite words for ‘whore’ anyway. In Westeros, certain women followed hosts in the field to warm soldiers’ beds as well as tend to their chores, but not here.

 

Here, their armies were generally too disciplined for whoring and wenching. Ironically, he lived in an area that was an exception to the rule. Any civilians were employed by the army as a whole instead of by individual men. Other field chores were handled by soldiers themselves. Mayhaps the tasks could be assigned as punishment detail. Even without disciplinary problems, the roles could fit recruits ill-suited to a certain order of battle.

 

It was a strong reminder of the Night’s Watch, especially to the black brothers with Robb. The men of the Night’s Watch tended to their own needs, instead of relying on followers. Why, the Peacekeepers also had their own order of builders. Sam had been named to the stewards because he fit that and was ill-suited to the rangers.

 

            It was another wonder of this place how easily they could make books or other written documents. The process had been a fundamental part of their society for over a thousand years, so by now, the average educated person was at least aware of the basics. Plates were carved with an image, inked, and pressed against a surface. Alternately, blocks for each letter could be rearranged for different pages, rather than carving separate plates for each. Such machines could make thousands upon thousands of copies instead of writing mayhaps a few by hand.

 

The workshops which did so in quantity were elsewhere, but well off people and organizations had machines, which operated on different principles, which could print a few things. The wealthy of Westeros didn’t own let alone generate much of the written word. The library at Winterfell had mayhaps a few hundred books, though some places in Westeros would have more, notably the Maesters’ Citadel in Oldtown.

 

            It seemed Sam would have made a fine maester. That oath would have also denied him his inheritance as his lord father insisted. Indeed, the oaths were compatible; maesters serving the castles on the Wall took both. However, the prospect of his son in nonmilitary service and wearing a chain still hadn’t been good enough for Randyll Tarly.

 

            Here, children were taught to read from simple books instead of having the words in regular tomes explained to them. Sam was serving well as a tutor. He stayed seated behind a desk as much as possible as one measure to conceal his excess weight from those who had too little of it. Sam’s students appreciated his general attitude

 

Jon had thought Sam was twenty stone. That turned out to have been close enough. Upon their arrival, the scales here had Sam at nineteen and half. He had done well getting down to nineteen. That would have been fat even on a man a foot taller. Speaking of which, Gale didn’t weigh far above ten, even with copious poaching. That’s about how heavy Robb and Jon were at slightly under six feet.

 

            Even what passed for the well to do of District Twelve couldn’t eat as much as Sam had at Horn Hill. That made much of the difference. That being said, Sam was still a major customer of the Mellark bakery. The lady of the house was known as the witch of the district, which seemed all too true. Sam was uncomfortably reminded of his lord father. From the sound of it, her third son Peeta was hardly a traditional boy either, despite having the physical strength typical of Mellark men. Sam was usually served by fellow first son Pan.

 

            It made sense not to rely overmuch on women, or servants of any gender, for routine chores. The Westerosi didn’t have staff here. It reminded Robb and Jon of finding the direwolf litter. Ned had said that if his children wanted to keep the pups, they had to feed them themselves, not merely tell the servants to do it. The fence which kept district people in supposedly was there to keep dangerous animals out. With Grey Wind and Ghost out in the woods, there was more truth to that.

 

Jon kept Longclaw with him inside the district but was strongly discouraged from carrying it. Laws on blades were relaxed due to cutting tools. This incidentally protected swords and other such weapons. Even though it was exceedingly rare to have one, it was not so much of a problem if you did. They sure had to hide their bows, though.

 

Robb saw a fellow redhead when he walked into the Hob. However, while Darius King was a friendly man, it seemed he would have no interest in talking right now. He was with Ellen Flowers, a young woman known as one of the district’s whores.

 

At the time Robb arrived, she had been quite prominent with child, and had taken to childbed barely a moon’s turn after, though Robb met her and learned this afterwards. The babe Lily was like as not sired by one of Ellen’s customers. If that man was a Peacekeeper, even if he wished to acknowledge his bastard, he could not, for to do so would be confession to oathbreaking. Due to that possibility, Peacekeepers would block use of Panem’s blood tests to answer that question.

 

Robb still found a trueborn Flowers odd, since that was the bastard name in the Reach as ‘Snow’ was in the North. The Reach was a highly fertile region in the southwest of Westeros. Apparently this woman was fertile as well.

 

What had happened to her wedded parents was the exact opposite of amusing. Her father had died in the same mine explosion that had killed Gale’s. Her mother had starved to death in the aftermath of losing even that meager income. No wonder Ellen and her sister Anna had become whores. Robb had never partaken, but hadn’t felt any desire to condemn it as some pious men did. Now he had a better understanding of that, poaching, and many other trials and tribulations of smallfolk.


	20. Dacey I

Bear Island warrior women like Maege Mormont and her five daughters were particularly impressed with two of their guests. Clove Hawkins did amazing things with throwing knives. Katniss Everdeen had learnt archery from her father with similar thoroughness, although for very different reasons. The whole of King’s Landing had seen what she could do with that bow. Most Northerners including the ones here cared little for southron pageantry, but they still valued the combat skills expressed in tournaments.

 

It had quickly become clear that Thresh Mackey had incredible potential as a fighter – he was incredibly strong and carried good steel. He had been unskilled in its use, sent into a melee against those who had spent years with masters-at-arms, trainers who were tournament winners themselves. Those at Bear Island failed to see the honor in that either. Thresh’s inexperience could be rectified with time spent at any proper holding in Westeros. Lucky for the residents of Bear Island, the hall he arrived at was Mormont Keep.

 

            It took Dacey longer to realize his potential as a lover. He came to her a grim man, frustrated with a hard life, having no desire to participate in the spectacle of those Games. He had cheered up in the few moons’ turns between arriving in Westeros and when coming to Bear Island. His countenance had become yet more pleasing as they found such a home here.

 

            Well, Katniss and Peeta had shown there was much to be said for a strong yet gentle lover, very much indeed. Mayhaps that’s what it took to be able to handle such high-spirited women. Thresh was hardly intimidated by that, even stimulated. He had grown up around such women, after all. Dacey realized this was a bare minimum for her, but it was also a good sign and a first step.

 

            The day was a few moons’ turns into the 298th year after Aegon’s Conquest. They were continuing to grow close to each other while spending time training in the practice yard. So were Katniss and Arya, but working with bows instead of bludgeons. _Due to her size, there was only so much she could with that fine little sword of hers, however adroit her footwork_ , Dacey assessed of the high lord’s daughter.

 

Thresh carried a fine spiked mace from amongst the foreigners’ supplies, and was getting better and better at swinging it, not only with more force but also at the right spots on the target. After one particularly vicious blow, it remained stuck in the training dummy.

 

            _That seemed enough fighting for today_ , she thought as she wrapped her arms around him from the back. This had more purpose than relieving his sore limbs. Her calloused hands found firm forearm muscles. They had definitely touched while practicing together before, and that had led to their first kiss, but they had never before embraced this closely.

He started sweating even more than he had been from the work. He noticed she noticed and began to explain himself. “It is to be expected, when I am being caressed by such a beautiful woman,” he insisted. Dacey was relatively plain and she had the sense to admit it. Yet when Thresh praised her appearance, they both knew he meant it.

He had desired Alysane at first. That had been plain as day, and understandable, as she was definitely a full-figured woman. Yet his attentions had just as surely turned to Dacey within a few fortnights since his arrival.

            “Come by my bedchamber after we bathe; there is something I most desire to show you now,” she said softly. _She meant her name-day gown._ He likely would’ve had a general understanding even if he hadn’t known a lick of the Common Tongue. At this Dacey thought of him licking her all over. _That ought make sure my cunt is plenty wet when he slides his cock past my maidenhead_ , she said to herself, the sort of lustful thoughts she was having plenty of lately.

 

            To still _have_ her maidenhead at four-and-twenty was another way she wasn’t the average Westerosi woman. Many maids of that age looked worse than plain. As her mother’s heir, she needed to focus on political and military affairs, not romantic ones. She had gathered that some sober-minded lordlings had similar thoughts. After all, most Northerners were sensible, guided by harsh realities. With her mother and four sisters hale and hearty, there was no rush to secure the future of the Mormont line.

 

Dacey knew she could wait for the right time. _By the gods, that time was now!_ This her mind and body told her alike. She laid atop the blankets in her bedchamber, neglecting even smallclothes. She moved her legs apart, to expose her cunt hairs to what would surely be Thresh’s hungry eyes. The cold northern autumn wind seemed to chill her teats.

He had come to her fully dressed, mayhaps so others did not see him moving about the keep nude, mayhaps out of a thought that arriving in his own name-day robe would have been presumptuous. “You needn’t have put those clothes on,” she told him with a smile.

            “You are even more beautiful right now, Lady Dacey,” he said breathlessly. “While I was born and raised a smallfolk, I still learned how to be a gentleman,” he said. He’d made such statements many times before, and had continued to prove their truth. Yet this time he was able to kiss Dacey’s teats instead of her lips. Trailing downward, he found a sweet spot at the top of her cunt. This only made them want each other even more.

He dropped his smallclothes as quick as he could, and Dacey got but a glimpse of his very stiff member before he climbed atop his lover. It was no matter. Her eyes needed to see it less than her cunt needed to feel it. Her womanly parts most surely sensed his manhood. He spilled his seed in her quick, but they both knew they would have much more time so close together.

 

Even before this momentous afternoon, they were both starting to consider that their time together would mayhaps be the rest of their lives. It didn’t take many more days to make up her mind that she would wed him. She told him, and they were words he had thought but not dared to say, hearing them from her removing all doubt.

 

As they shared their first kiss as betrothed, he commented “This sort of bear tastes better.” That had not limited him in the feast hall, though. Katniss’ arrows did make it easier to bring down their sigil-beast. Eating so well, and not just bear, was turning Thresh into even more of a physical wonder. Dacey was especially pleased to see that, knowing the full extent of it.

 

Her lady mother was of ambivalent thoughts. He had been a farm boy, but Maege had tolerated Alysane’s dalliances with commoners and loved the resultant grandbabes. Mage knew that one Mormont woman could be as stubborn as another, so she did not stay in the way of her eldest’s wishes.

 

The whole group adored seeing Rue healthy and safe. Of an age with Jorelle, the fourth of Maege’s five, Rue was a wonderfully goodhearted girl, clever, at home in the woods. She was also a beautiful singer like the Miss Katniss she had gladly traveled with. It was hard finding Westerosi songs for the voice of two-and-ten, many too sad, violent or bawdy. Yet everyone seemed to love _The Bear And The Maiden Fair_.

 

Katniss and Peeta thought that now was about time for _them_ to wed. The 108th day of this year was twenty years to the day since her parents wed, thought her father had died after nearly fifteen of those years; their people counted such things as well as namedays. All four of them thought that a fine date for the next great step in their lives.


	21. Katniss VI

Two young women who had once been occupied with anything but romantic matters were becoming brides on the same day. Dacey had figured she might take that path eventually, but Katniss had never expected to at all. Now it seemed like the most natural thing in the worlds, to build on those years-ago moments with Peeta the way he long since had.

 

            “Even if my mother were alive, she wouldn’t be here for this,” Thresh said, a bit of rage overtaking him in these happy moments.

            “I’ve heard nothing but the good things your grandmother had to say about her,” Dacey replied. “And I wish I could meet your sister as well. If you give me daughters, we shall certainly have plenty of ideas for names,” she said, balancing the weighty conversation with a smile.

 

            In Westeros, women died in childbed because the proper medical care didn’t exist. In Panem, the poor of the districts couldn’t afford it, as one of many effects of the Capitol keeping them poor. Katniss wasn’t sure which was worse. Yet she was sure it made her even more scared to have children.

 

            Well, she’d become the exact opposite of scared of love as she grew closer to Peeta. That was one area in which he’d been braver than her.

 

            This place had a forest much like Winterfell’s. Katniss had come to know it well. The Mormonts were there for obvious reasons, but Katniss knew much of the way herself, after a few moons’ turns hunting in that wood.

 

            Katniss was well aware of District Twelve wedding customs. It was hard to not be aware of her hometown’s expression of such a common thing. However, Glimmer and Cato’s union had been one of the few she’d actually attended.

 

            That only had one pair, so no need to make a choice about in which order the couples said the words. It generally happened pretty much all at once in mass ceremonies like those on August 2nd, the day after Reaping Day. That haste seemed unnecessary with only two couples. Dacey wasn’t sure whether her status as heiress to this place meant she should go first or last.

 

            Katniss dug out a coin from her tournament winnings. “That idea’s golden,” Peeta japed.

            As Katniss threw it straight up into the air, Dacey called out “Heads for first.” Once the dragon came to glisten in the dirt, Dacey glanced at Aegon I and gazed deeply at Thresh once more.

 

            “I’ve always dreamed of this, getting to spend all the rest of our days making us happy,” Peeta said airily during the walk. The way he spoke to her, looked at her, and so on continued to confirm her decision to take this walk with him.

“Sometimes dreams do come true,” his bride answered.

“Such flowery gallantry mayhaps seems like it would be tiring upon repetition, but I am not the one wedding and bedding him,” admitted Lyra, Maege’s third.

 

“I know who comes before the old gods of the forest, Dacey of House Mormont, my eldest daughter and heir,” Maege began, dispensing with formalities that asked obvious questions.

“It is I,” Dacey answered. “I know Thresh Mackey comes with me, I know him very well,” she continued. Even the mildly rude jape was an appreciated break in the proceedings, to judge from the titters of most witness.

“My daughter, do you take this man?” Maege asked, returning to the proceedings.

“Yes,” she said simply. She hesitated. _More like having Thresh take me again_ , mayhaps she wanted to say, Katniss wondered. Now that she was no stranger to the act herself, she was becoming less of a stranger to merely japing about it.

“And I, I,” Thresh began. As with Cato, romance could render even such a tough man speechless. Katniss was reminded that Thresh was even taller than Cato and near as tall as Gale. “I gladly become the husband of this wonderful woman who’s welcomed me into her life,” Thresh was finally able to say.

They were all wearing Mormont colors already, since black on green was available in abundance. They were not the first to bear the arms of a house they served, or in Thresh’s case, married into. Even legally, it was no different than a wife dressed in her husband’s sigil.

Thresh turned to Dacey yet again. “I shall cherish you for as long as the fields grow,” he vowed.

 

Katniss stepped further into the wood with confidence, yet she was still in somewhat of a daze. She suspected Peeta would do more than enough remembering for both of them. “I will honor and cherish the one I’ve chosen, throughout all the highs and lows this life presents us with” she still managed to say in unison with her beloved, some traditional words of District Twelve phrased as a statement by spouses rather than a question by witnesses.

 

            “We should still acknowledge our old ways here in this new land,” Peeta announced. “I’ve got bread.” He had still taken to the kitchens that morning, to start work which the servants continued upon. It was no matter to him. He loved it, though not nearly as much as the woman he did it for. “Could someone get us some firewood?”

            “Must be a District Twelve thing; we had nothing like that in District Eleven,” Thresh observed.

            “Exactly. It’s called the toasting. The newlyweds make a fire in their new home and heat bread with it,” Katniss explained.

            “Is it that simple?” Dacey asked.

            “It is important that the couple make the fire together and by themselves,” Peeta added. “May we all burn passionately for each other, and not just now as four become two, or something like that.”

 

            “Bed them!” Clove suggested.

            “I don’t think they need any help with that,” Lyra observed. She seemed to say that with resignation, mayhaps wanting to see just how much a physical wonder Thresh was. “They’re already bedded. They wed for love, it’s not like an arranged marriage where they need to be prodded into consummating,” Lyra continued. Katniss didn’t want to think about when it was worse than prodding.

 

            Neither couple had trouble quickly getting alone. Katniss and Peeta were heading right to her bedchamber. Once they were actually in bed, Katniss began speaking to Peeta in a low whisper. “I’m feeling awfully warm right now,” she said.

            “Being next to another warm body and being under these blankets will do that to you,” Peeta replied.

“You know that’s not what it is,” the Kat purred. “It’s because of what I know that body can do to mine.” Peeta was more than warm, that was for sure.

            “I knew for a long time there was such a sexy woman locked up inside of you,” Peeta said, his turn to whisper sweet nothings.

            “And you unlocked me,” she said, reaching for his rapidly stiffening cock, making it even more so. She rolled over to arch above him, instead of lie beside him, flexing her hips as she spread her legs. She knew that drove him wild even before he came into contact with what was between them.

 

            The sensation in her cunt was overwhelming even before being filled with his cock. For both of them, there was nothing like watching his member twitch in anticipation, sticking up from him as he was lying down. He soon rolled her over. She could tell he wanted to ravish her, but he stroked as slowly as he could manage. “Stay in me, my love,” she requested.

 

It should be no matter if he filled her. With her moons’ blood upon her in a few days, the seed was unlikely to quicken. Alysane had explained why she only had two so far, information Katniss found exceedingly valuable. Peeta could have difficulty sliding out in time in the throes of their passion. Often, neither of them wished to limit which particular activities they partook of. The ingredients of moon tea could be difficult to acquire even for people of their means. That realization was another way in which having wealth still shocked Katniss. The plants didn’t seem to grow wild here, and that was an area of herbology in which Katniss was particularly unskilled. Yet over the past few months she had been glad to learn of affairs of the heart.


	22. Cato II

Glimmer Rose Shinesmith Adams was adapting quite well to life in Westeros. She had been raised to enjoy the finer things in life, and had quickly grown accustomed to the form that took in Westeros.

 

            She sometimes found herself refusing well meaning offers of fine wine. “Where we’re from, we know pregnant women should totally avoid strong drink,” started one such exchange.

            “Does that have to do with why death in childbed is so rare amongst your people?” a maester had wondered.

            “That’s true for other reasons. This is more to help the babe grow strong, healthy and without dulled wits.” The Westerosi intellectuals were aware that none of the four-and-twenty were medics. It was striking to the maesters that such things were commonly known in Panem even amongst those who weren’t healers.

Some of the tributes had first aid knowledge, especially the Careers as part of their training for the arena. However, those techniques weren’t groundbreaking to the Westerosi. The people from both places would have been more interested in Panem’s medical technology.

 

The tributes would have also liked more of Panem social views. Westerosi could be such prudes, especially to the women. Cato rarely wanted to gaze at anyone besides his wife, but he could’ve if he wanted, which seemed reasonable if it didn’t go further. _Look but don’t touch_ , some Panemites japed. Many men here weren’t even that reasonable.

Yet when Glimmer cast such a gaze at him, it caused a commotion. “ _Lady_ Adams! Control yourself!” one of the Westerosi highborn women said indignantly, her voice veritably dripping with sarcasm.

Glimmer shot back with an explanation and educated guess. “I desire my husband - what in the seven hells is wrong with that? Are you jealous I married someone I love instead of someone my father told me to?”

 

Even the few in Panem who still believed in restricting sex to marriage celebrated it within that arrangement. Cato figured he might want his sword at hand, either in case this escalated or to keep it from escalating. Glimmer just as instinctually went for a knife. Rather than find her machete, she hefted the carving knife from the beef platter. They were fighters both. While he had several inches on her – and often another several inches in her – he didn’t metaphorically look down on his bride at all.

 

The heckler’s husband was also in the hall, and had some similarly wrongheaded vitriol for Cato. “Your wife is a whore,” he spat.

“I don’t have to pay her,” Cato claimed correctly.

“How many boys did she have before you, and yet still you took her?” the so-called gentleman continued.

“She wants me as much as I want her,” Cato pointed out. “And since men here are welcome to whore and wench before they wed, why can’t a woman do the same?” _Tolerating it after a man wed was a different matter._ It seemed like basic fairness to those raised in Panem. However, that made it literally a foreign concept here. Cato was emboldened by the familiar weapon grip in his right hand as well as a few cups of Arbor gold in his belly. _After all, premium wine like that could kick as surely as common drink._ “I sure as hells know what I’m doing, but if a lesser man got a virgin bride, she wouldn’t be any the wiser.”       

 

People probably should listen to women themselves, but that seemed to be asking for too much here. Mayhaps sympathetic men could get the point across. Coming from a tough guy like him, it helped dispel the idea that such thoughts were those of weaker men. Cato and Glimmer were often shocked by the treatment she received even when it wasn’t related to slandering their bedchamber activities. Some people back home wanted further progress, but the rulers in both places had just as little taste for change.

 

The newfound wealth of Glimmer’s new husband _did_ help her live her dream of luxury. “Yet what really matters about my golden man is not his gold,” she said during one of their many passionate nights in the bedchamber. “There’s nothing like the way I feel in my big bad Cato’s arms.”

“You mean how my cock feels in your cunt?” he shot back as he felt her firm hips and ass under his strong hands yet again. Bedding each other was fantastic indeed. Although there was more too it, sometimes he didn’t want to admit just how in love he was. He knew she knew; to him, that often seemed practical enough. Even his relatively reserved behavior about his feelings for her was considered supremely gallant here. He was distracted from those thoughts of chivalry by the desire emanating from her cunt.

 

He saw her hairs glisten with her juices. She wasn’t used to being blonde between her hips as well as her ears. The razors were one of the things that sucked here. Glimmer certainly didn’t want them anywhere near such a sensitive area; she had said the process could be irritating enough even with Panem blades. Cato somewhat understood, not even wanting to shave his face. Fortunately, his anything but a maiden wife thought he was even more a maiden’s fantasy with a short beard. He sure didn’t mind her hair either. It seemed she would always be beautiful, both to herself and to him, especially when displaying such passion.

 

He heard her skin smack against his as she pushed up against her beloved husband’s body. She had more of a lean runner’s body instead of his raw strength, and as usual, they wanted their different types of muscles to be even closer to each other. Aroma wafted from between her legs as she threw them apart for him. He felt the softness of her lower lip flaps underneath his fingers as he moved them apart to mash her button. He somehow became even more aroused, if that was possible, as she was overwhelmed. “Tastes as wonderful as the woman who issued it,” he said as he licked his fingers. The spit made it no more difficult for him to grab her ankles as he put her legs on his shoulders to ravish her.

 

            This wasn’t how Cato had grown up, but he could get used to the lifestyle. District Two living conditions were fairly plain, but also fairly good compared to the rest of the districts. It made obvious sense to at least keep your soldiers happy. Failing that, one should at a minimum have loyal provosts. Military discipline, like armies as a whole, was not so organized here.

 

Cato and his Career comrades couldn’t be of much help with military affairs. They were trained for duels, mayhaps small skirmishes, definitely not massed engagements. However, it was easy enough to acquire shaped lumps of iron for workouts. These obviously weren’t so precise and adjustable as the weight rooms in the Career academies, but they served quite nicely, and better than using just whatever heavy object was at hand. The rough smithing created grips that would’ve needed to be cut into smoothly machined steel.

“So this is how you snapped Thoros’ steel and knocked him into the dust?” Jory Cassel marveled while curling one of the dumbbells under Cato’s direction. People who were already strong were benefitting further; the techniques hadn’t been employed with novices as of yet.

“Aye, this sort of training paid off in that fight,” Cato agreed. “Really paid off,” he joked while lifting a bag of gold dragons. For him, this was a rest day from the iron.

 

            For those less passionate than Glimmer and Cato, which was most, he’d already gotten her with child, so what was the point?

The southron vows said something about the bride bearing the groom’s children, so sex was not expected at this point, and acts besides the husband’s cock in the wife’s cunt were not considered at all. It wasn’t technically expected in Panem at all, and some abusive husbands were held to account as rapers. “I suspect His Grace does not want to hear of that,” a Stark guard warned.

Even other loving couples often abstained while expecting. That obviously would not do for Cato and Glimmer, so they simply found different positions. Such things generally weren’t discussed openly even in Panem, but if they were, the young lovers would not have slandered someone else’s happiness in an attempt to defend their own.

 

“So your melees are half girls – is that because of the way your realm treats women, or do you treat women differently because of that?” one of the other Stark soldiers asked.

“It was already well-established, but mayhaps the Games still had an effect. The Victors are even more famous than tournament regulars here, and nearly half of ours are female. Not only that, but many girls practice at arms in the hope of being amongst that number. It’s more popular amongst the boys, but there are more than enough elite girls too.”

“Some things boys like, some things girls like,” the man-at-arms said as he took that in.

“Is that a matter of who we are or what we’re taught? ‘Tis sometimes clear, sometimes not,” Glimmer wondered. “Either way, how well do you treat those who differ?”

 

“It seems you don’t fit in with the high society of King’s Landing either,” Ned assessed with dry understatement. In the intervening moons’ turns, he had become formally sworn to House Stark. “Yet don’t blame yourself for questioning their lack of honor.”

Due to Cato’s temperament, he went about that in a different manner. Ned and Stannis couldn’t stand Petyr Baelish, but they wouldn’t call him a sleazy cuntmonger, let alone to his face. Whatever business he was in, he ought not be involved in underhanded measures against competition. However, that’s precisely what he was doing to another upscale brothel. It seemed particularly unfair to that foreign woman and her daughter.

However, it couldn’t yet be proven that any of Petyr’s behavior was outright criminal in a way that threatened the authorities. It seemed he was leaving enough of a take for his monarch.

 

            “I need relief from this city,” Ned lamented. He had a particular good reason to leave it soon at least temporarily, and one that would be accepted by the other men of note. Catelyn would take to childbed within weeks after Glimmer.

            “May you hold a fifth son,” King Robert blessed as Ned planned to take his leave. “Stannis is well suited to the chain.” _And likely thought he should have received in the first place._ Whether Stannis was Hand permanently or temporarily was a matter yet to be decided. It was a suitable position for the heir to the throne; more than one crown prince had held it before.

 

            Ned and his party began their trek back to Winterfell mayhaps a moon’s turn after the new year. Cato, Glimmer and the few other tributes remaining with them shared amusement at brisk autumn weather in what Panem knew as February. Glimmer was in a wagon. Even those more experienced with horseback riding or pregnancy may have wanted to stay out of the saddle. The northerners were pleased to be going back home, and the tributes didn’t mind the change of scenery either.

 

            Ned wasn’t quite his usual plain self when riding back through the Winterfell gates, but his opinion was still what people had come to expect of him. “Dearest Catelyn, I do not intend to leave Winterfell anytime soon, especially not for that southron snakepit.”

            “It was clear you took to the south much worse than I took to the north,” she responded. “And your place is by my side more than Robert’s. It is about time he called solely upon his _blood_ brothers instead.”

 

            Brandon Stark had insisted upon a return feast for his lord father. He’d shown promise as Ned’s new heir, his sense of justice augmented by respect for the counsel of his maester and lady mother. Of course, Jaime shouldn’t have tried to kill him, but Catelyn _had_ been right to worry about Bran’s climbing. Bran had taken this as more reason to listen to her generally. Now he was at one of the tables slightly below his father’s seat.

Those benches were a surprisingly high place for Jory to sit at, rather than guard. It was a gift for his niece Beth in addition to the well-received trinkets from King’s Landing shops.

 

It wasn’t clear where the tributes belonged, but it was obvious that Glimmer and the lady of the house still liked each other. “Labor only feels like a lifetime. You’ll love your children for an actual lifetime,” Catelyn advised. “Though it is rather useful to have the servants help tend to the babes,” Catelyn said with a smile.

            “I should hope so. In a way, I’ve been excited since my little sister got me to want a baby girl of my own.” Cato had heard Glimmer’s story before, but his wife’s words were still sweet. He knew how much she cared for little Lustre, perhaps because the sisters were so similar. Lustre likely would volunteer for the Games herself in a few years. Glimmer had been awed enough by Cashmere, a Victor she was not related to.

            “Sometimes I wish my own daughters were that close,” Lady Stark said with frustration. “Both of them liking you is quite a feat.” Sansa was excited both for her friend and for another sibling. Arya was likely enjoying herself in the woods of Bear Island with her new friends.

 

            Shortly before Glimmer’s nameday, Winterfell received a raven from Bear Island. “Lady Maege’s heiress Dacey wed Thresh the same day Katniss and Peeta entered into such a union,” Luwin summarized once he opened the raven scroll.

            It hadn’t seemed inevitable with their District Twelve comrades, but it wasn’t surprising either. The situation with the young man from Eleven wasn’t as clear. He had been warming up to life here. _Or the extension of his life in general, not having to fight me_ , Cato thought, his silent boast quite justifiable. Mayhaps his personality further developed into something that would appeal to someone so highborn. Or he had a physical appeal that might’ve struck someone of any social class. Cato had learned that Mormont women could be rather stubborn, so whyever Dacey had wanted Thresh, she would have insisted upon him.

Cato wondered what Clove thought of it. Knowing that she couldn’t have him, would she have been attracted to someone similar? Thresh was also a big strong guy with enough brains behind the brawn. Obviously, they’d been shaped by quite different childhoods, but would they have turned out similar growing up in each others’ districts?

 

            Glimmer’s time came on her husband’s nineteenth birthday. “A quite auspicious nameday,” Luwin observed once Cato came running to the maester’s tower. The new father seemed particularly swift, not only because of the occasion, but also in comparison to the old man and the woman in labor. “Nine-and-ten, is it?” he said while gathering equipment.

            “Aye,” Cato responded.

            “At least she’s eight-and-ten. Being much younger than that certainly doesn’t help the odds in childbed,” Luwin pointed out. His tone was a reminder that here, Glimmer was at an average age for a first-time mother. Catelyn hadn’t been much older when bringing forth Robb. She had been just shy of twenty; Cato’s own mother was just slightly past that. Teresa Anthony was particularly young for District Two, although Peacekeeper rules drove up the average. Glimmer once needed to clarify that Mink Shinesmith had been seven and _twenty_.

            Maester Luwin approached Glimmer. Catelyn calmed the mother-to-be with “He has delivered all five of mine, after all.”

            “And may the gods grant six for six,” Luwin added.

 

“It seems that if you are to hold a son, you wish to do so as soon as possible,” Luwin directed at Cato, but it was more than that. Cato was as close as he could be without getting in the way of the medical experts, but he wasn’t about to leave his wife’s side in this moment. His presence was ever a protective influence to her. “People ought feel safest around their spouses, Luwin agreed.

 

 _She’s in pain because of the child I planted in her_ , Cato wryly realized, _so it helped to vent at me._ “Lady Adams, I can’t provide you with much more milk of the poppy,” the maester said with exasperation.

Glimmer hoped it would soon be time for her to provide regular milk. _After all, that’s what those magnificent teats are for, not my amusement_ , Cato thought devilishly to himself.

She smiled when Luwin pulled the baby the rest of the way and announced “It’s a girl.”

Cato gazed upon the cord-clipped and washed newborn resting on her mother’s side. His daughter was barely bigger than one of his forearms. Even considering how well-built he was, this still awed him.

 

This thought got him to hold her now. “More precious than any gemstone,” he said to some laughs from those who knew the name. ‘Gemstone’ seemed particularly suited to a child of both the luxury and masonry districts. Friends and relatives they could’ve named her after were not around to appreciate the honor.

 _Teresa, Lustre, Cashmere …_ They had considered one of those as a middle name, but three names seemed greedy in a world where most people didn’t even have two. Married women used both of their last names, but not at the same time, let alone a fourth. _Too bad. ‘Glimmer Rose Shinesmith Adams’ is near as beautiful as the woman it refers to_ , Cato thought to himself with a smile. He had both a soft spot and hard spot for her.

 

            They had still thought of Julius Adams after his fallen father, had this babe borne the male designation. They may well still have a son at some point. Luwin had wise words related to their next one. “Even I’ve heard of your passion. You must give her flower a rest for a moon’s turn or two.”

He had a point, but even this couple found themselves occupied. Besides, they couldn’t do each others’ bodies justice in this tiredness. Some of the other men knew Cato’s haggard look from soldiers who had marched at night for an element of surprise in the morning. Most of the other women had a more direct understanding of Glimmer’s exhaustion. “I do like giving suck, but not at these ungodsly hours,” Glimmer agreed.

 

            The whole castle was preoccupied with the arrival of Catelyn’s sixth. That happened barely more than a fortnight later. She too had a girl. “I think it is time for another Lyanna,” Ned decreed; they memory of his dead sister must’ve been too raw when he got his other two daughters.

            Speaking of which, Sansa was certainly showing her mother’s knack for children, both instinct and acculturation. Bran and Rickon welcomed their new sister, but Sansa did so ever more eagerly.

            King Robert had also liked Lyanna, and the name might help him feel better about Ned’s resignation. Ned certainly felt good about the decision. Cato was six-and-ten years and six children behind but was starting to understand.


	23. Jon I

Jon had grown accustomed to the routine of his life in District Twelve, and so had the other Westerosi. However, the most macabre part of Panem’s schedule was fast approaching. It was nearly time for next year’s Games. This reminded Jon that he and his comrades were equally eligible.

Every five-and-twenty years, the death tournament operated under an additional rule. This year it was “To remind the districts of both the Capitol’s punishment and its mercy, if a tribute’s district partner dies they both die, but the final remaining district pair wins together.”

 

            Last year’s spectacle had been replaced by excitement over the foreign visitors, who were still popular stories. Daenerys had come here already with child. She went into childbed on April 3rd with a boy Rhaego. Jon’s lord father – his uncle, he had to remind himself, had respected Prince Rhaegar even as an enemy. Daenerys’ handmaiden Doreah was promptly impregnated, and gave birth to the third Harvest Blade on May 8th.

            Doreah and her fellows Irri and Jhiqui had all been tutors to Daenerys in some way, instead of servants who were mere laborers. As such, they could adapt their teaching skills to the affairs of smallfolk. Their classmates seemed to appreciate the help. Jon wondered to what extent the images were Capitol propaganda.

            Sam understood. He was happy the girls had fit in similarly to how he had. He figured the Capitol showed a few lucky students from District Eleven, and the rest were far worse off.

 

            Effie of House Trinket was a highborn woman who adored fashion, that much was certain. That was understandable. To take so much pleasure in reading these names was not. “Margaret Undersee!” and there were significant cracks in the mayor’s professional façade. To his credit, he seemed disturbed even when it wasn’t his own children. “Rory Hawthorne!”

            Jon knew he had to do something, that which Rory’s brothers were one year too old or too young to do. Jon walked out of the herded formation. _No sudden moves and no unwelcome attention from the soldiers_ , he reasoned. _No more attention that the people already receive_ , he added wryly. Jon knelt. “I, Jon of Houses Stark and Targaryen, put my own name forward.”

            “We have a volunteer: Jon Stark-Targaryen,” Effie translated. The crowd was as excited as the men and women in white would allow, their faces hidden behind darkened visors. Many of these Peacekeepers were reserves sent in from the Capitol. Even those who were patrons of the Hob had to keep up appearances today.

 

            The tributes had a few minutes to say their goodbyes. Jon observed the room he was herded into. The chamber was appointed like a fine solar, but was a dungeon in practice.

            Sam was his first visitor. “I’m a craven,” he insisted. “but I think I still know bravery when I see it, and if anyone has the mettle for this fight, it’s you.”

            Robb indicated a similar guarded confidence. “At least you have the training to ride off to war.” Some didn’t, including the girl in the next room, may the Mother have mercy. He would be facing others who had practiced for exactly this. “Your action honors your houses, our new home, and last but not least, the instruction of Ser Rodrik.”

 

The mention of the Winterfell master-at-arms wasn’t any shock to Jon; the cousins raised as brothers maintained its memory, instead of trying to forget it in favor of their new home. Jeyne Poole kept fond remembrances of Sansa. Sam had quite understandable reasons for not wanting to think about Horn Hill. With Talla, he was reminded of a better aspect of his time there.

 

“I don’t know what to say,” Rory stated simply.

“You deserve it, as good a life as you can have here, which likely involves that girl,” Jon responded. Rory and Prim still went hand in hand. They hadn’t just appeared together for the arrival of the Westerosi nearly a year ago. Mayhaps happy highborn betrothed were like this with each other. The people here generally didn’t agree to a betrothal until shortly before the wedding. That often happened soon after the reaping when they were eight-and-ten, which Rory still stood a chance of seeing.

 

Watching the other reapings, Jon learned that none of the other exiles had been sent into the arena. Madge recognized another mayor’s daughter. In District Two, Mary Lazare had stepped up along with her brother Patrick II. Patrick I seemed even more stoic than his District Twelve counterpart. Districts One and Four presented lovers rather than siblings.

Jon and Madge decided to walk around the train while thinking over the reaping recaps privately. Haymitch was quite used to the bar car. He was not used to guests there. “You drink, Lord Stark?” he said, puzzled.

            “Certainly. Wines, mead, and ale at least,” Jon answered.

            “I do enjoy the refreshments here,” Haymitch understated.

 

The wine here wasn’t so sweet. Jon wasn’t used to wine being fancy rather than common. Also, Panem produced stronger drink by boiling something with alcohol and chilling the vapor, repeating the process to purify it yet further. Wine was made well in the south of Westeros, so Jon hadn’t thought about the process.

            District people were denied so many things that the lack of strong drink didn’t seem like a concern, though maybe the situation meant they wanted it more. Clearly, Haymitch had been driven to drink by what he’d been through.

 

            Effie soon found both of them stumbling around the train and upturned her nose. “Abernathy, you alone was quite enough,” she muttered. “At least I’ve had luck getting this year’s girl to act like a lady.”

            “Let’s talk strategy in the morning,” Haymitch slurred.

 

            “Maybe we could try a lovers angle again, but if even Gale does not charm her, Miss Undersee must be wholly uninterested in men,” Haymitch said bluntly.

            “Finally someone besides my parents have figured it out,” Madge replied.

            “It is rare in my land, but there are rumors about some people,” Jon stated.

            “I bet it’s quite common, just that nobody wants to talk about it,” Madge rejoindered.

            “Well then, there are a couple of Capitol men that make it their business to sponsor tributes of your persuasion,” Haymitch said. Jon was already learning that sometimes useful things broke through the fog of Abernathy’s drunkenness and hangovers.

 

            Haymitch then shifted the conversation. “ _Anyway_ , the outsider volunteering for his new friend’s brother, that’s gold.”

            “I’ve been a sort of outsider all my life,” Jon acknowledged.

            “I watched her aunt die in the arena, the family won’t lose another,” Abernathy added.

            “My mother is wrecked enough as is,” Madge admitted.

            “And let’s not forget the obvious. Stick them with the pointy end. I am trained with a sword, after all,” Jon announced.

            “They certainly should have swords in the arena, so the odds will be in your favor,” Haymitch agreed.

            “And other weapons, ones that people didn’t see me carrying,” Jon added.

            “Seems I’ve almost got a Career this year!” Haymitch closed.

            Jon drilled with a sword in the Training Center. The whole country had already seen him with one; Panem would see him with a recurve bow soon enough.

            Madge couldn’t be taught to shoot in three days. No one could, one of the parts of the Games that was a mummer’s farce. She didn’t have the raw strength to swing heavy weapons. _Many girls and quite a few boys lacked that capability_ , Jon admitted to himself. Madge agreed with Jon and Haymitch’s joint suggestion to try small handheld blades. “Guess this is the kind of stiletto I’m wearing now,” Miss Undersee japed.

            “Stick ‘em with the pointy end, Claire,” Jon advised, calling her by her middle name.

            “Can’t much slash with these,” she acknowledged.

 

            She took relatively well to it given the timeframe. Even so, she seemed lucky to be rated eight out of twelve. Jon felt his twelve was well-deserved; mayhaps he would have scored higher if the mechanism allowed it. He found these bows incredibly easy to operate and it showed.

His sword style was reasonably cautious instead of the all-out attack Patrick had shown during public training. Jon had trained to fight soldiers with comparable arms and armor; the Career tributes had prepared to press their advantages in equipment.

            The District One couple both favored daggers; Madge would avoid confronting her more-experienced counterparts directly. The lovers from Four bore some sort of spears. Those would have been more useful against horse, but still provided additional reach against foot.

            Agate and Goldie were the only others to score twelves, but the other Careers were all between nine and eleven. No one else rated higher than eight; the pair from District Three both did, but the other strong tributes had weak district partners. That left them particularly vulnerable to the special rules this year.

 

            The evening before the tournament, each fighter would talk to Caesar Flickerman in front of the whole of Panem. Though fighting as teams, they would talk to the Capitol man separately.

 

            The barbers beforehand were certainly thorough. Usually, the men of Panem shaved themselves. It was a luxury rather than necessity to have someone else do it. The Capitol spared no expense. It seemed odd for those who were about to die. It was also unusual to those used to the austerity of the North and then District Twelve. Either way, the partially encased blades or powered devices were amongst the mundane wonders of life here. Seven hells, the women here used them too. The female tributes’ underarms and legs made that clear enough. Mayhaps their cunts were smooth too, but the gowns were not quite so scandalous as to provide evidence thereof.

 

            Amber and Goldie weren’t showing off; given the circumstances, it would have seemed odd if they had. Madge, though… _Some woman is gonna be real lucky when we win_ was about all Jon could say to himself.

 

The lovers talked about each other. They’d probably wed if they won. From what Jon knew of Panem, they likely had already bedded each other. Jon better understood the bond of his District Two counterparts. _They’re still the enemy. You musn’t hesitate_ , Jon told himself.

Mary then made herself easier to dislike, at least from Jon and Madge’s perspective. “Yeah, the Lazares are the ones who will be doing well even by mayor standards,” she boasted.

The stories were intended for sponsors rather than opponents, anyway. No one stood out from Districts Five through Eleven. At least in that manner, the interviews were similar to training.

 

            “This pin has been a token once before,” Madge said as she flashed a piece of jewelry.

            “I’m guessing it’s not Haymitch’s,” Caesar said to easy laughter. “Lily’s?” he guessed, naming District Twelve’s only other Victor.

            “No. It belonged to my aunt, Maysilee Donner. She died helping Haymitch to victory. This year, Jon and I will get to win together,” Madge announced, the literally tearful family story turning into steely resolve, at least pretending to celebrate the Quell rule.

            “I’m rather unlike the tributes from One or Four. I couldn’t much be here with a lover. There’s a girl out there for me,” she said, making it clear. She’d probably get plenty of volunteers for that.

 

            “I felt a sense of duty, not desire for women, riches or glory,” Jon explained to Caesar. This gave the whole of Panem a glimpse of his intentions, but Sam would best know what Jon meant.

 

            The tributes were pricked with devices that would tell the Capitol their location in the arena, detect when they died and kill their district partner. The last was an addition to account for this year’s special rules.

 

_The Games_

 

            The tributes emerged each on their own island. Jon felt as if he was being smothered by the warm air. Raised in ice, he’d have to fight in fire.

 

            He saw Madge on his right about a third of the way around the circle. Patrick was immediately to his left; none of the other dangerous tributes were near the District Twelve pair.

 

Obviously the fisherfolk had an advantage in this environment; they likely were the two figures diving into the water on the other side of this ring. Jon had some idea of how to swim thanks to the lake in the District Twelve woods. Gale had thought Jon was crazy for going in the water during late autumn and early spring, but that seemed sensible now.

For those who had no idea how to swim, the purple belts kept them from sinking. Those tributes were still at a disadvantage, even after figuring out what the clothes were for. The material was well-suited to getting wet. _The technology would be a great aid to anyone traveling by sea_ , Jon thought.

 

Jon was relieved to see Patrick swim away from him; apparently neither of them wanted a confrontation quite yet. There were land bridges every two islands. Both of the sword wielders felt even more confident on dry ground.

 

Some tributes happened to be placed near the cluster of Careers. The odds were not in their favor. That was where the bloodshed started. Agate stabbed the boy from Three. Goldfish ran through the girl from Eight. Mary let her knives fly at Seven and Five.

Jon saw all that out of the corner of his eye as he was going through the supplies. _Weapons, nothing but weapons._ The Careers had left some behind as they rushed to get started with the killing spree. Jon was able to grab a bow before anything else. Fortunately, it was already strung.

He saw the young woman from Ten and shot her before she could get to a sword, preserving the blade for his own use. He ran for it now that it was available. Madge had already managed to get one of the small blades she had trained with. She was nearby, pacing the area. This was the first time Jon had her in earshot today, but there was someone else around.

She stabbed the boy from District Nine, before Jon could get into his sword stance or nock an arrow. She barely flinched as she extracted her blade. “You handled your first kill well,” Jon complimented.

“Well, girls are used to seeing blood,” she replied.

 

That was all the bloodshed for this morning, the initial melee while the tributes were clustered together. A dozen cannons sounded for the dead. Now the Games came down to tracking opposing tributes and winning duels with them.

 

Carrying both a scabbard and a quiver would quickly grow tiresome, especially in this gods-awful heat. The latest fight had shown that he couldn’t fight as well with either while holding both. He could throw one in the water to deny it to the enemy if it came to that. Yet Jon didn’t wish to discard either. Mayhaps Madge could squire for him. That she did, carrying his bow and arrows. He was reminded of archers who carried small weapons for hand-to-hand combat.

 

Tributes had to forage for supplies, another aspect of this procedure that a Westerosi man-at-arms would be used to.

Jon thought they had water, but the lake tasted of the sea. It seemed a cruel jape by the Gamemakers. Jon recalled washing down salted meat with water rather than the salt being in the water itself. Drinking more of that would do no good. Haymitch sent some fresh water as a sponsor gift; mayhaps they could forage for more later instead of continuing to rely on this expensive source.

There were some things they could hunt or gather, but their food supplies still relied on sponsor gifts somewhat.

 

Two pairs of cannons sounded during the second day. The nightly summary proved what Jon had expected; something had caught up with the pairs from Six and Eleven. Mayhaps the Careers, mayhaps the arena itself. There had been a variety of fierce storms and dangerous beasts throughout the day.

 

There were now eight surviving tributes. This stage of the Games was a major part of the spectacle as people from the tributes’ home districts were interviewed.

 

Madge and Jon were hiding in this odd forest come the middle of the third day. She was the first to notice the Careers’ current campsite.

Against Goldie or Hal, Jon wouldn’t be able to get close enough with his sword, let alone Madge with her dagger. “Your bow, m’lord,” Madge said as she curtsied, holding the weaponry instead of the hem of her clothes. The arena outfits were all close-fitting anyway. Jon made Hal’s death both quick and spectacular, placing an arrow point right in the young man’s neck.

 

The dusk was growing deeper, and it was immediately clear that some tributes wouldn’t see the morning of the fourth day. They overheard the remaining Careers arguing. “I said sleep while we take watch,” Patrick shouted at Agate. “I meant that literally, not fuck Amber yet again.”

“Has Patrick _seen_ Amber? I can’t blame Agate for _that_ one!” Madge said giddily. Apparently both sides were alerting the other.

“Pat? I need to make you aware of a stark reality nearby,” Mary said, trying to interrupt her brother. It was no use; Patrick had already picked up his sword and was running through Agate with it.

 

Patrick brandished the bloody blade as hovercraft arrived to retrieve the bodies of the District One tributes. _That seemed of minimal use_ , Jon thought as he nocked an arrow. Nobody would be able to close the gap before someone on the other side took a shot. Jon had the bow at hand for much this reason.

He wouldn’t miss, but neither would Mary. He saw the young woman from District Two plant her feet … in Madge’s direction. “Claire!” he called out. Jon had stuck his sword in the ground, and Madge retrieved it from the soft dirt. She held the flat side out and deflected Mary’s knife.

Jon’s first arrow had grazed Patrick as his District Two counterpart ran at him in a zigzag pattern. Mary started chasing after Madge, one mayor’s daughter trying to get out of range of the other. If she had switched her targets, she would have had to throw across her body and mayhaps would have hit her brother instead. With Jon’s second arrow, he was able to predict Patrick’s next move.

 

_The Victory_

 

Jon passed his crown to Madge. This was specifically in his oath, not a matter of interpretation. Also, with the general spirit of the words in mind, he wouldn’t hoard his newfound wealth.

 

The new Victors received plans as well as congratulations. The mayor would still need his working quarters, but he and his wife would settle in Victors Village, like any other close relative of a Victor might. It was a Victor’s prerogative to invite them. Jon of course extended this to Robb. Sam, Talla and Jeyne were not their relatives, but Miles Undersee had said they were welcome in the soon to be underused mayoral facilities.

 

They returned home a few days after emerging from the arena; few in District Twelve had ever experienced such spectacle.

One girl ran right up to Madge and stole a kiss. _A bold move_ , Jon thought. She looked familiar, and he quickly figured out she was Ellen Flowers’ sister Anna. “That’s free,” the young woman japed.

Robb soon decided that he would volunteer for whichever boy was reaped next year.


	24. Robb V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I edited all the past chapters to make the prose flow more smoothly, which delayed a new chapter even when working on this story.
> 
> I would be interested in working with a beta reader going forward. Thanks to Anemira_Lynx for motivation on this.

Ned Stark always insisted he took no joy in killing. Robb saw the truth of that in what had happened to Jon and Madge after the 75th Hunger Games. Jon had slain three and Madge one, or was that really six for him and two for her? It was ultimately the Capitol’s fault, but they were the ones left to do the butchers’ work.

 

            Jon seemed to worry about meeting his predecessors’ fate. Many of them didn’t have much of a victory, particularly Haymitch. His family and lover were gone. He was a miserable old sot, though it was fun to drink with him. Jon and Madge had given him a reprieve from years of failure, both this year and with the grim work in the future.

 

            Robb worried whether he could live up to the standards of those who came before him. Madge mostly seemed relieved that she hadn’t met her aunt Maysilee’s fate. Melody Donner Undersee would have been even further ruined, a scary thought considering her rather frail state. Now Madge’s mother was almost cheerful sometimes.

 

            Jon had trained for war and was still somewhat shocked; Madge was worse off. Sometimes it wasn’t Anna making her scream.

 

            When Anna Flowers stole a kiss from Madge, she was a whore with an interesting idea for getting more business. Now they were taking a genuine liking to each other. Either way, Anna was glad to see another of her sexual tastes do so well, and more than kisses were involved now.

 

            One of the woman Peacekeeper officers, not exactly a lady, was standing around the Hob with a bottle of white liquor in her hand. Captain Diana Shield was happy for the new Victor, in a way. “Yep, the odds are in Madge’s favor – Anna knows where a clit is, that’s for goddamn sure!”

            “The Flowers girls know how to fuck, I’ll drink to that!” Cray said.

            “You’d drink to most anything, sir,” Shield countered. Unfortunately, these corrupt soldiers were better for District Twelve than terrifyingly efficient troops.

 

‘Clit’ was this place’s name for the bump at the top of the cunt. Jon had found it on some young women at Winterfell, one of the things he’d done with the girls that didn’t risk siring a bastard. Here, he didn’t even go that far. Sam was cautious by nature, and both interpreted the Night’s Watch oath accordingly.

 

Robb had courted a few of the local girls, but none of them seemed to suit him. Mayhaps he was still used to how highborn girls acted. If Robb had such thoughts about Talla or Jeyne, he would’ve realized that by now. Sometimes even the Townies seemed strange, but they were less different.

 

District Twelve was literally to Sam’s taste. The Mellark bakery often made deliveries. This was discreet about Sam’s eating habits. It also kept him from being near Mrs. Mellark, who was all too similar to Lord Tarly; both hated a son for being sensitive.

Talla often answered the door for Sam; she was taking a liking to the older brother, Pan. “He’s a maiden’s fantasy!” she said breathlessly. Here, she would have to remain a maiden for another few years if she wanted him.

“I suppose carrying all that would develop the muscles,” Jeyne replied.

He was well-mannered, so this was no case of chasing away a rogue. Sometimes people objected to a match with cause, other times for no good reason.

 

Robb and Jon called their Victors Village home ‘The Castle’, though nothing would compare to the memory of Winterfell.

 

They did like the luxuries here. “Barely need servants with all these machines!” Robb said again. Water drew itself, the heat and light was automatic, and privies emptied themselves. They did still have a cook and maid, but nothing like the staffs the highborn had back home. The kitchen cleaning wasn’t much compared to what was set before the scullery maids of Westeros.

            The labor saving devices were just the beginning of Panem’s household marvels. The soap didn’t burn. It was no surprise people here were so clean if they could afford it.

 

            Robb and Jon were tempted to do some of the work themselves to fill the hours. It made sense for the highborn to be capable of doing such things for when servants weren’t available. This was especially true of soldiers in the field.

            Much of their income was used to take care of their friends.

Poaching was a fool’s errand with their wealth, though they now understood the desperation of the smallfolk who did that. Gale didn’t risk it anymore. He liked the woods, but not enough to cross the fence for its own sake without Katniss.

            Talla and Jeyne were glad to be relieved of common sewing. A couple Seam girls were grateful for the work. Anna had done odd jobs like that when she hadn’t been having sex for money.

            Sam still loved teaching as much as Mrs. Everdeen enjoyed healing, and she liked that even more now. Yet it was a shame that even Victors had limited access to Capitol medical supplies.

 

            They were well-amused. Of note was the chess set from Frayer’s shop. Jon and Robb found it fitting for soldiers. Sam appreciated how it was simple yet clever. “I read about a similar Volantene game called cyvasse. It lets you choose the deployment of pieces and also has obstacles.”

            “Is there anything you haven’t read about?” Jeyne replied.

            “How to charm wenches,” he said morosely. “But I certainly love all the books here.”

 

            The outer districts were somewhat glad to see anyone besides the Careers win. Careers had professional respect for Jon’s skill with blade and bow.

            Patrick Lazare remained as District Two mayor even after the deaths of his children. The lost might make him more likely to rebel. Yet there were so many potential rebels here that it wouldn’t work to execute them all without further cause. Being either too strict or too lenient both could make matters worse for rulers. The Capitol didn’t take as heavy a hand in the Career districts.

            Perhaps Mayor Lazare coped with his grief by focusing on his work. Jon said the man was cold yet diplomatic.

 

            This place had better versions of a lot of things from back home. There was much and more about Panem that Westeros couldn’t imagine, yet that was available only to a small amount of Panem’s population.


	25. Viserys I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started a new job mid-April, so I’d been doing even less writing than usual, and as usual I kept getting ideas for other stories. It’s good to be back. I added more in-character summary of past events, and will do that for the next few chapters.

Drogo did not have his wife, so Viserys did not have his army. Viserys had fulfilled his part of the deal; though Dany was gone through no fault of his own, Drogo had another excuse to not do his part. Now the khal had stalled long enough to get away with it, though Jorah insisted the Dothraki would give back eventually.

Dany had been the only other remnant of the Targaryens after the Usurper stole everything else from them. Viserys was amused by some news coming out of Westeros. Robert had been cuckolded by his notsogoodbrother. The whoremonger had sired children on so many women in Westeros, but not his wife. For that, Jaime had been sent to the Night’s Watch and Cersei to the Silent Sisters. The Kingslayer would’ve gotten death had Viserys received his birthright, but that Lannister finally faced some semblance of justice.

Doreah was also gone, and Viserys did not like that one bit. Gods, that Lyseni wench certainly knew what to do with that beautiful body of hers, which Illyrio could also vouch for, and Drogo indirectly. The Dothraki girls were wholly uninterested in Viserys. Mayhaps that was due to the horselords having horse-sized cocks, making even his manhood seem average by comparison.

The khal certainly missed his wife. Jorah muttered that the man had excellent taste in women. Mormont, I also wanted to fuck her, Viserys thought to himself.  
Drogo had a man’s needs, but saved his seed for his wife. It had taken root; Daenerys had gotten with child, so the khal was missing a prince as well as a queen. Men usually hoped for sons and half the time they were right.  
That boy would be Viserys’ heir if he didn’t have any trueborn sons of his own. Ordinary lordships would pass to a sister before a nephew, but the law of the Seven Kingdoms was particularly strict about seating a man on the Iron Throne. Princess Rhaenyra had caused much tragedy by resisting her younger half-brother Aegon II. The first Viserys was the son of a second son rather than the daughter of a first son.

Jhiqui had been teaching Daenerys the Dothraki tongue. Viserys hadn’t managed to learn the horde’s babble. He felt he was doing well enough with other translators. Jhiqui was far too plump for a girl her age, so Viserys had felt doubly disinclined to pay attention to her. He didn’t much remember Irri either.

One thing hadn’t disappeared, Daenerys’ three dragon eggs. If hatched, they would restore Targaryen power in fact as well as law, an unfulfilled dream of his predecessors. Even in the hottest flames, the stones seemed unmoved.

Those who had appeared were making themselves known even across the narrow sea. When Robert named Lord Stark Hand, the foreigners were guests of honor in King’s Landing. One of the young men won the tournament melee, and one of his comrades made a respectable showing. One of the young women won the archery contest, and Lord Stark’s daughter did surprisingly well for a little girl. Their equipment sounded superb along with their skill. It wasn’t dragonbone or goldenheart. It couldn’t be Valyrian steel. Doubtless that would have raised even more gossip.  
The total prizes were ninety thousand dragons! Robert did like wasting money. His Master of Coin, Petyr Baelish was a shrewd merchant. He had a fancy brothel in King’s Landing that Viserys wished to investigate personally. Mayhaps that did not qualify him to handle a whole realm’s wealth; a fine soldier did not necessarily make a good officer. Even he might not be able to keep up with Robert’s profligacy. Lord Baelish might be a thief. Whatever the answer, he would die along with other top servants of the false king.

The melee winner had wed one of the other women. Apparently they understood the taint of bastardy, as she took to childbed about nine moons after they arrived. They were amorous to the point of scandal, so they were not ones for social convention. Yet since they were man and wife, the sexless septons couldn’t say shit. As it happened, Lady Stark had given birth a few weeks later, prompting her husband to resign. Now another one of the Usurper’s dogs wore the chain, his brother Stannis.

Arya was now fostered at Bear Island along with some of the foreign friends. Finally Jorah was interested in some of the news. “Though my aunt and cousins prefer maces, it’s a relatively good place for girls who prefer arrows to hair ribbons.”  
“What do you mean?” Viserys asked.  
“They both have to do with bows. I admit a jape does not seem so humorous when it must be explained,” Jorah said.  
“Two of the guests wed each other and Maege’s heir married another,” Viserys continued. “No specter of bastardy, the heiress is just now with child.”  
“Best of luck to Cousin Dacey,” Jorah added. “Recall that my house simply followed their liege.”  
“Against their sovereign, but yes, most of the blame lies with Baratheon, Stark and Arryn,” Viserys said.

Viserys the third now faced another pretender to his throne, the so-called Aegon the sixth. Rhaegar’s children had been murdered by the Usurper’s dogs, and their mother Elia raped. One young man claimed that he was Rhaegar’s true son, a babe of the smallfolk killed in his place. The tale was utterly absurd. Yet the Golden Company believed it. No wonder those sellswords had been one of many groups to laugh at Viserys. The Dothraki would make them pay along with all the other traitors.

Drogo was no fool. A man could not be to earn command of five myriads of men in the prime of his life. Unsullied slave soldiers had stopped a different horde at Qohor. The Golden Company was composed of free men but seemed similarly dangerous. The Unsullied were all spearmen, but the Golden Company also had cavalry and archers. No other rider could compare to the Dothraki, as Viserys was tired of hearing, and the horselords would soon be expected to prove their worth.


	26. Katniss VII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve been busy with my jobs and with other entertainment. I’d like to thank a middle school classmate now working on movies for motivating me to get back to my own writing.

            Katniss knew her knots, but left her smallclothes nearly undone to fuel her husband’s considerable passion, more moments to savor together. As Peeta stirred, he turned over to see that her nightgown had come open. It was hard for him to imagine a better sight. Katniss was already so intimately a part of his life, but she would never be mundane to him.

            She loved being kissed awake, but usually on her mouth instead of her teats. Still, he pressed his mouth to one of her nipples while brushing his fingers on the other. She stirred and whispered. “I’m dreaming about my extremely cute husband getting my cunt all wet again.”

            “Real. It’s no dream,” he whispered. “But I’ve felt like I’m dreaming ever since you loved me back.”

            “I never dreamed I wanted this, but I… Most. Definitely. Do,” she said as she parted her legs and moved closer to him. Indeed, not so long about, she would’ve never acted like that. Peeta caressed her hips as he wrapped his arms around them. She squeezed his forearms, and the skin barely moved. “So hard, and so gentle,” she added, giggling.

“Are you asking for something else like that?” Peeta responded with equal glee. When she nodded, he pushed slowly inside her. He stroked as slowly as he could, but would eventually spill his seed nevertheless. He got it on her belly, and she ground her midriff against his.

 

            “This is certainly a fine way to celebrate my eighteenth birthday, when every day you make me feel like your queen, especially when cooking such delicious things for me…” She grew less coherent as he kissed her neck, her throat vibrating against his lips. He surprised her by tracing his tongue upwards, finding an open mouth.

 

            It was a good thing they didn’t have to get up early in the morning anymore. The Mormonts had him doing afternoon and evening baking now. He may even be given a role with managing food supplies, all the more important with winter fast approaching.

 

The hunting grounds here still yielded healthy amounts of game, at least for now. Katniss loved hunting here, and Clove had developed a taste for the practice. She did rather like her knives, and it was something to focus on besides what Cato was doing. _Or who Cato was doing._

 

They’d grown up fast in Panem, yet was normal or even slow by Westerosi standards. Six and ten rather than eighteen as the legal adult age was an understatement. Rue was thirteen. Many girls had protective fathers, and Rock Clayton would certainly be acting like that if he were here. However, Rue had a Katniss and many other metaphorical sisters and brothers.

 

Peeta had given his spouse a romantic nameday, and Katniss was about to do the same. “The best eighteenth nameday imaginable – spent with Katniss Everdeen my lady wife,” Peeta said once they finally exhausted themselves for the evening.

 

Dacey was pregnant, likely to take to childbed in barely over a moon’s turn. Names from nature were the domain of the smallfolk. Yet the heiress to Bear Island would consider such a thing for a daughter in honor of Thresh’s sister or grandmother. His mother was Diane, who had died in childbed, so that name might seem like taunting the gods. “The name comes from Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt,” Clove explained.

 

Sometimes Thresh slept elsewhere. Dacey found it hard enough to sleep with the bed to herself. There was no sense in disturbing him too, and even rough accommodations in Mormont Keep were far better than the shacks of the worst of District Eleven. Katniss had been shocked that there was something worse than The Seam, a sentiment often reinforced when meeting the smallfolk of Westeros.

 

Dacey had been in no mood for amorous activities. The four of them had bedchambers were close enough that they sometimes overheard each other. “I feel horrible,” the Mormont heiress said.

“Well, I feel you are still the most beautiful woman in any world,” Thresh responded.

“You are gallant, to which I am surprisingly susceptible, but I doubt it,” Dacey said.

“This does not lie,” Thresh said.

 

“Probably showed her his big ol’ cock,” Peeta muttered. It sounded like Dacey was mounting her stallion.

“You’re plenty big enough to make me very happy,” Katniss insisted. “This does not lie either.” She tossed aside her robe and thrust her hips out. “I’m wet at the simple thought of you caressing me.”

“And stiff too,” Peeta said as he brushed his fingers over her engorged clit. She shivered, and shook further when he took her in his big strong arms to lift her teats to his mouth. “Nothing better than sliding inside you.” He spent several glorious, agonizing minutes on the edge of his own pleasure, and Katniss did not experience such delays.

 

Katniss saw Dacey on their way to breakfast. “Apparently Thresh thinks you’re sexy even now.”

“I do apologize,” Dacey said sheepishly.

“No need. You are downright discreet compared to Glimmer and Cato,” Katniss said. “And it gave Peeta _ideas_.”

“Well, Thresh wanted me to ride him, for the next time he wanted me to bend over. Not buggery, just sticking it in my cunt from another angle. I did not know you could do that.”

“Don’t tell Alysane, she’d mock our cluelessness,” Katniss said.

Dacey went on. “And he said our baby would be very well fed - he found my teats even more tempting than usual.”

“Does it hurt when he beds you?” Katniss wondered.

“A little, at first, however gentle he tried to be. But I got _very_ used to it,” Dacey said.

 

            The next night, Peeta was on top. He wasn’t just laying above her, but matching her limbs, growing even closer when their hands gripped each other instead of the bed.

 

As Dacey’s time grew nearer, Maege ensured help was right at hand. “I want a watch rotation of midwives at all hours,” she said, even now talking like a soldier.  Some of the women were general medical talents who had tended to Mormont troops when Robert rebelled, or when Balon revolted against him.

 

There was a big crowd in the main hall of Mormont’s Keep, eagerly awaiting news. The house was popular like most Northern lords save the Boltons. Baby excitement might happen anywhere, but especially so with a line of succession to something significant. Thresh was astonished at how far he’d come, literally and metaphorically, and how far his child would go.

 

“Aly, stop running so fast!” Maege called out. Melting snow on stone did make such behavior unsafe.

            “I’m not, Lady Grandmother,” Alysane Snow answered.

            “I meant my daughter,” Maege said. That Alysane was happy about having someone ahead of her in the line of succession. It was likely to happen eventually, hopefully not taking effect for a long time. It was important that blood ties exceed such crass political considerations. _If only my mother’s relatives understood that_ , Katniss thought. In the world she was now in, this would explain the strength of the prohibition against kinslaying, worse than treason.

 

            One of their old stewards, not Peeta, ran off to make the announcement. “Lady Mormont’s heir has been safely delivered of a daughter,” she said.

 

            “I’m crazy enough to do that again,” Dacey announced. Thresh’s smile made clear just what he thought of that idea.

            This prompted the head midwife. “It’s best to let your womanly parts heal for a moon’s turn or two before laying with a man again.”

 

Alysane was glad to see her sister finally enjoying male companionship, and the motherhood that sometimes resulted from it.

Rue had a different perspective due to her age and being away from home, but she too was a big sister. It was hard to think of people she might never see again, but it was easy to coo at Thresh’s child. “Hi Raspberry! Me daddy’s friend. You cute!”

 

This was the fourth day of the eighth moon, by the Panem calendar nearly August, so Katniss knew there were far worse games to play. She’d been saved from the arena reality once, and had already avoided the possibility last year.

Mayhaps she would want to bear children, especially if her life remained relatively stable and she liked this babe as much as it seemed she would. Katniss didn’t tell Peeta that she was pondering procreation. She didn’t want to get his hopes up if she took awhile to get comfortable with the idea or decided against it. If his seed quickened despite their attempts to the contrary, she'd accept that, but was unsure about deliberately letting it take root. He would make a fine father; she was sure of that, and he had similar confidence in her as a mother.

Thanks to the Hand tourney, they could afford it.  Katniss was so used to the austerity of her childhood that she had trouble spending it. Some of it was paid to ships for food deliveries in preparation for winter.

Maege was right that her daughter and her guest couldn’t ask for more devoted husbands.  Katniss could do worse. As she leaned her head on Peeta’s shoulder, she thought she couldn’t do better.


End file.
